The Send Mail script step in FileMaker can be a quick and easy way to send mail completed with data from your database system. It should be noted, however, that the script step works differently on a Windows OS vs a Mac OS. Neither work exactly as you would expect because they both require user interaction unless you use the SMTP configuration. Intriguingly, the Windows version functions even more unexpectedly.
On the Windows platform, once FileMaker creates the email in the email client, you then cannot interact with FileMaker at all until you Send or Delete the message from the email client. As you can imagine, this might be a problem for users who want to check an email against data in their system or who simply aren’t ready to send the email yet.
There is a remedy.
Instead of using the Send Mail script step, use the Open URL script step with the Mailto URL scheme. The code for the URL scheme should look something like this (you’ll notice that I set a variable for the email recipients and used global data entry fields for the subject and body):
"mailto:" &
PRF__Preferences::g_Current_User_Email_Address &
"?bcc=" &
$emailList &
"&subject=" &
PRF__Preferences::g_Email_Subject &
"&body=" & PRF__Preferences::g_Email_Body & ¶The Open URL script step will open up a new email message in the default client just as the Send Mail step does, thankfully though, it will not lock you into the email client on the Windows platform. Fabulous.
It is said that you can send multiple attachments with the Open URL statement. Tried it but haven’t quite figured it out yet. Next post! 🙂
Great post Kristy!