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vb6 fax/email problem

smeyer56 (IS/IT--Management)

(OP)

16 Nov 06 10:24

I was handed a VB6 application that faxes up to 100 customers a night. The previous programmer put text into a richtextbox then faxed it page by page using FaxManJr until it was completely sent. It works okay.

Problem now is that some of these customers want the same information emailed instead of faxed to them, but I need to keep the current ability to fax for those that don't. Seems easy enough.

Here is what I have tried using clsSendMail to email:
-Putting richtextbox text into message body and then emailing. PROBLEM: The page is no longer formatted and with the email header, it splits the pages in undesired places. Would work okay if page breaks could be added.
-Using cutePDF to save individual pages as PDFs and sending as attachments. PROBLEM: CutePDF prompts for file name when saving and there might be on any givin night up to 100 of these. Need more automation.

I have been doing reseqarch for a few day on this and I am stuck on where I should look next. This seems like it should be a fairly easy project, but I am banging my head against the wall right now.

Could someone lead me in the right direction or give me some links that I should look at?

Thanks
Steve

petermeachem (Programmer) · Answer 1 · 2006-11-16 15:53:43

If you are using the same thing as me.
Are you setting AsHTML true?

From the help doc

Set this property to true if your message is formatted as HTML text and you want the receiving email client to interpret the email as HTML instead of plain text. You must also make sure the message text includes valid HTML tags. For example, setting this property to true and setting the Message Property to “Hello There” will be interpreted as plain text. To send your message as HTML you must set this property to true and set the message property to valid HTML, something like:

<HTML><BODY><B>Hello There</B></BODY></HTML>

You can embed images, etc. by using the AsHTML Property and the Attachment Property together. When AsHTML is True the Attachment Property is used to embed files called out in the HTML code. The message text is scanned for file names that match the file names set via the Attachment Property.

smeyer56 (IS/IT--Management) · Answer 2 · 2006-11-17 11:11:23

The message is currently formatted as rtf so sending as html doesn't work

petermeachem (Programmer) · Answer 3 · 2006-11-17 11:58:16

Google "convert rtf to html" lots of solutions

smeyer56 (IS/IT--Management) · Answer 4 · 2006-11-20 11:11:35

That could work but it doesn't allow me to place a page break. Still have the same problem, it is now formatted but when a page is printed, the page splits in undersired places.

strongm (MIS) · Answer 5 · 2006-11-20 16:07:13

Well why can't you just send it as an RTF file attachment?

smeyer56 (IS/IT--Management) · Answer 6 · 2006-11-20 17:17:27

Would possibly work except the files are 550k and 1 email might have 15-20 attachments.

strongm (MIS) · Answer 7 · 2006-11-20 18:21:34

Well, neither a PDF or HTML file are going to solve that one ...

strongm (MIS) · Answer 8 · 2006-11-20 18:55:25

Well why can't you just send it as an RTF file attachment?

strongm (MIS) · Answer 9 · 2006-11-20 18:56:54

Er ... now there is no way I understand how that happened ...

SBerthold (Programmer) · Answer 10 · 2006-11-21 02:33:11

Why not just zip the rtf files all together and send the one zip? I personally would rather have that sent to me rather than an email with 20 attachments or 20 emails.
Or just email a link, or a link for each file, to them and let them pull-them-in-from/view-them-on a server/homepage themselves.

smeyer56 (IS/IT--Management) · Answer 11 · 2006-11-21 09:15:04

I have not tried zipping, do you have any links to doing that in VB6. I cannot use links because I don't want to place these files on the web server.

Swi (Programmer) · Answer 12 · 2006-11-21 09:46:25

Here you go.

http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/VB/Code/Libraries/Compression/Zipping_Files/article.asp

Swi

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 13 · 2006-11-21 13:59:29

I've had real success with xstandard's xzip.dll. To check it out: http://www.xstandard.com/printer-friendly.asp?id=C9891D8A-5390-44ED-BC60-2267ED6763A7.

Bob

strongm (MIS) · Answer 14 · 2006-11-21 15:39:15

Coo, all these 3rd party tools when you can get Windows to do it for you ...

Swi (Programmer) · Answer 15 · 2006-11-21 15:51:23

RE: vb6 fax/email problem

Swi (Programmer) 21 Nov 06 15:51

Please share strongm.

Swi

strongm (MIS) · Answer 16 · 2006-11-21 15:59:07

Heh! That request came a lot faster evan than I expected. OK, here's an illustrative example:

CODE

Option Explicit

Private Sub Command1_Click()

    CreateEmptyZip "c:\testzip.zip"

    With CreateObject("Shell.Application")
        .NameSpace("c:\testzip.zip").CopyHere "c:\test.txt"
        ' .NameSpace("c:\testzip.zip").CopyHere .NameSpace(FolderName).items 'use this line if we want to zip all items in a folder into our zip file
    End With
    ' All done!
End Sub

Public Sub CreateEmptyZip(sPath)
    Dim strZIPHeader As String

    strZIPHeader = Chr$(80) & Chr$(75) & Chr$(5) & Chr$(6) & String(18, 0) ' header required to convince Windows shell that this is really a zip file
    With CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
        .CreateTextFile(sPath).Write strZIPHeader
    End With

End Sub

Swi (Programmer) · Answer 17 · 2006-11-21 16:02:45

The less I have to rely on 3rd party tools the better. Thanks for sharing.

Swi

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 18 · 2006-11-21 16:37:24

Just a second here, strongm. So, you're saying that when the FileSystemObject gets convinced that this is really a zip file, it will automatically apply a zipping condensation algorithm when storing the file?

Swi (Programmer) · Answer 19 · 2006-11-21 16:59:31

strongm,

One other question. Is this only XP compliant code or will it work with prior versions of windows?

Swi

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 20 · 2006-11-21 17:12:46

There's nothing in this code that would be XP specific, unless the header line differs from opsys to opsys. If that were so, I'm sure strongm would have mentioned it.

SBerthold (Programmer) · Answer 21 · 2006-11-21 18:19:57

I would still use a 3rd party zip executable to zip the files if emailing to 100+ customers.

SBerthold (Programmer) · Answer 22 · 2006-11-21 18:23:19

>3rd party zip executable to zip
3rd party zip

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 23 · 2006-11-21 18:43:47

>I would still use a 3rd party zip executable to zip the files if emailing to 100+ customers.

Why?

strongm (MIS) · Answer 24 · 2006-11-21 18:48:12

Quote (Sberthold):
I would still use a 3rd party zip executable to zip the files if emailing to 100+ customers

Why?

>XP specific

No, but it is Shell specific, so you need to be XP or later ... (which nowadays would mean XP, W2K3, Vista and, I believe, W2K also works - so you ony really miss out on the frankly obsolete 16-bit OSs and NT4)

>it will automatically apply a zipping condensation algorithm when storing the file?

Exactly so. Try it, and see what happens ...

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 25 · 2006-11-21 19:36:45

Got a slow day tomorrow...I'll do it then and post back results for those interested.

Swi (Programmer) · Answer 26 · 2006-11-21 22:21:14

strongm, thanks again. I would assume that with some modification this could be set up to unzip files as well or do you have an example of that as well? :)

Swi

strongm (MIS) · Answer 27 · 2006-11-22 01:59:57

Just to clarify slightly Bob: it is the Windows shell that does the zip handling, not the FileSystemObject

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 28 · 2006-11-22 14:02:13

Aha, that makes more sense to me. Well, that's nifty. I just tried it and of course it works. Thanks for sharing.

I got a little bit curious, though. I tried creating an empty zip file, reading the text file into a string, and then attempted to write to the zip file using the TextStream object's Write method. I got a "bad file mode" error, which kind of makes sense if the write method can't apply a condensing algorithm. Am I to conclude from this that the CopyHere method is smart enough to apply a condensing algorithm when it encounters the string header?

strongm (MIS) · Answer 29 · 2006-11-22 14:54:03

You might want to start investigating Shell Namespace Extensions ...

the one I'm leveraging here is the CompressedFolder extension, which lives in zipfldr.dll in System32, and has a CLSID of {E88DCCE0-B7B3-11d1-A9F0-00AA0060FA31}

Oh, and if you have a poke around HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.zip you should see where I got the header string from

BobRodes (Instructor) · Answer 30 · 2006-11-22 16:11:52

Oh, very good. Thanks strongm, I'll give all that a look.

HughLerwill (Programmer) · Answer 31 · 2006-11-23 06:54:48

This seems to be doing an unzip for me;

Private Sub CbUnZip_Click()

    With CreateObject("Shell.Application")
        .NameSpace(CurDir$ & "\Dest").CopyHere .NameSpace(CurDir$ & "\testzip.zip").items
    End With

End Sub

regards Hugh

HughLerwill (Programmer) · Answer 32 · 2006-11-23 08:42:46

Zip and UnZip using CopyHere as described above both working for me under XP but niether working under Win 2000.

regards Hugh

strongm (MIS) · Answer 33 · 2006-11-23 08:59:51

As I hinted, I wasn't certain that it worked under 2000 - but given that mainstream support for 2000 terminated over a year ago Ihave to say I'm not too surprised or too concerned ...

Creepers (Programmer) · Answer 34 · 2007-04-17 17:38:24

Hey strongm
Using the "Shell.Application" method, how can I surpress the "Confirm File Replace" dialog message that appears if a file already exist in a zip? I do want to replace.

tbanov (Programmer) · Answer 35 · 2007-06-14 17:48:46

I'm bumping this. I am having the same problem as Creepers in that I want to overwrite every time. My program involves many, many overwrites, handling the file data in between each one.

Thanks in advance.

HughLerwill (Programmer) · Answer 36 · 2007-06-22 05:43:50

Further to my post on 23 Nov 06 8:42; It works under Vista too.

tbanov (Programmer) · Answer 37 · 2007-06-22 12:09:32

Oh thanks, I think I was looking for snippets of code when I scanned and missed that.

downlaw (Programmer) · Answer 38 · 2007-12-03 00:17:59

Thanks strongm. This even works is MS Access 2003. The only problem I am having with it is that the ".NameSpace" parameter will not take a variable. I have to put quotes around a path and filename. It does not work dynamically.

mortarr (Programmer) · Answer 39 · 2008-01-08 20:53:08

> The only problem I am having with it is that the ".NameSpace" parameter will not take a variable. I have to put quotes around a path and filename. It does not work dynamically.

downlaw, just append a blank string to the start of the parameter in MS Access like so:

With CreateObject("Shell.Application")
.NameSpace("" & zipFile).CopyHere normalFile
End With

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