An important but often unknown feature of MS Access is the ability to utilise Outlook to send emails. 
Outlook is the email client of choice for many people and for those with the full Office suite, it makes sense to make full use of its capabilities. MS Access, as a data repository, is the perfect place to store email addresses (they might be client email addresses, student email addresses, etc.) but how do you send them?
One of the best and least known features of the MS Office suite is automation. Automation is the ability to manipulate one Office application from another and in the case of MS Access, as the hub of the Office wheel, is extremely useful. This means that we are able to programmatically open Outlook and send an email.
In this series of posts, we will be demonstrating how emailing can be performed using Access. We will be presenting you with one main function that enables you to open Outlook and prepare an email. As the posts progress, we will be modifying the function accordingly, adding more features and demonstrating more of what Access can do.
Each post will be accompanied with a downloadable Access file that contains all the relevant source code and a form to utilise the function along with all the code behind and a detailed explanation of the relevant sections of the code.
