Using E-Mail Forms to Collect Data
If you employ Microsoft Outlook, you can create the forms of investigation which you can send to other people in the e-mails. When people answer, you can have access automatically to add the answers to a basic table of data. For example, you could employ this capacity to collect reports on the state of progress of the work or information of order.
So that this process works, the recipients of form of investigation must employ a program of e-mail which supports made up e-mails like HTML. Nowadays, most programs of e-mail of principal current support this format. If your organization employs Microsoft Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 or later, you can also gather data via a form of InfoPath.
See Also
For information about additional options and refinements you
can make to e-mail surveys, search for Add the data
collected through e-mails to your Access database in
Access Help.
The Collect Data Through E-mail Messages wizard guides you
through the process of creating an e-mail survey form. You can create
different types of surveys depending on the applications that are
installed on your computer.
To collect data from an e-mail survey form:
-
Create a database table containing the fields you want to
include in your survey form, and position the cursor in the first
empty record.
-
On the External Data tab, in the Collect Data group, click
the Create E-mail button.
The wizard displays its first page.
-
Follow the steps in the wizard to create the form, add and
reorder the fields from the table, change field labels, specify
the Outlook folder to which the survey results will be delivered,
specify that Outlook should automatically add replies to the
original Access database table, and specify the survey
recipients.
-
Customize the subject and text of the e-mail message that
will be created, and then on the Create The E-Mail Message page,
click Create.
If Outlook is not already running on your computer, the
program starts and displays a generic message along with a form
based on the selected table.
-
Make any necessary changes to the Subject line and message,
enter the addresses of the survey recipients on the To line, and
then send the message.
Tip
When sending a data collection e-mail message to more than
one person, it is good e-mail etiquette to enter your own e-mail
address on the To line and other people’s addresses on the Bcc
line. That way, if a message recipient clicks Reply All, his or
her response will go only to you, rather than to all the
original recipients.
Message recipients respond to the survey by replying to
your message. Outlook delivers survey responses to the Access Data
Collection Replies folder (which it creates the first time you need
it). You can view individual survey responses and the status of the
data collection process in this folder, and you can view the collected
survey data in the original table.
To change the way Access processes message replies, display the
table and then click the Manage Replies button in the Collect Data
group. In the Manage Data Collection Messages dialog box, you can
click Message Options to adjust the automatic processing options,
specify the number of replies to be processed, and choose when to stop
collecting data. You can also resend or delete the message containing
the survey form.
