Email Data to Orderform Automation

I am getting sick of cut & pasting this over and over..

[AA Best Comfort Guy]

Basically my question is this:

I receive form emails with customers order information, all the general information is there. I then open up MS WORD XP, and cut and paste parts of the email: the name, address here and here, phone there, what they ordered here, etc, etc into a nice orderform I made in MS WORD. then cut and paste that out to outlook express.. on to the shipping area it goes. Blah.

Is there any recommendations you can make that can automate this. ( Email - to - MS Word ) Some days I get hundred orders.. and their I am all night cutting and pasting. Only to go over everything again with a fine tooth comb to make sure no mistakes.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

[Mardi_Gras]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld! There are lots of ways to parse the content of your e-mail messages. Why are you going to Word? Is that an intermediate step? What program does the order info from the e-mail need to end up in?

[AA Best Comfort Guy]

the info just needs to be placed into certain sections of my MS word Invoice that I created.. that is then sent out to the shipper. The basic typical stuff. I just need to some how automate this process... get it from my Outlook express into my Invoice form.

[Mardi_Gras]

Probably the easiest way to do this (I'm thinking before I dash out the door ;)) would be to parse the data into an Excel spreadsheet or an Access database, and pull the data for your Word document from that database. That gives you the added advantage of a database record of all of your transactions.

The only thing to watch will be that when you merge Word with your database, you have some way to identify "new" orders.

Not sure if you can parse directly into Word from OE - will think about that.

Also, OE may not be the best mail client to use for this purpose - Outlook may offer more options for parsing software.

[aspdaddy]

You can do this from Word, get the invoice to open up the orders from Outlook, not OE.

Another way is to have the invoice in HTML, open up the orders from a database online.

Either way you have a fair bit of design/coding to do.

[Mardi_Gras]

Either way you have a fair bit of design/coding to do.

Actually, going through an intermediate database would require no coding and would be pretty simple to implement. :)

The data gets sent to the database automatically (you can even use a simple .csv file that never gets opened); Word opens and pulls the data from the list. All that's required will be to use a simple query in Word to make certain the merge in Word is only pulling new inquiries.

At least, that's how I would do it ;)

[aspdaddy]

>The data gets sent to the database automatically

Thats coding or black majic :)

[Mardi_Gras]

black magic - at least it seemed that way the first time I did it ;)

[AA Best Comfort Guy]

Where can I find some documentation on these suggestions?
Thanks for all the replies so far... very helpful.

I have Office XP, Btw.

[Mardi_Gras]

There are three components to my proposed solution. The first is parsing the info from your e-mail form. There are some add-ons that will allow you to do that directly from Outlook; there are also programs like Message PArse and Advanced Mail Parser that will check your POP box and pull messages to parse. You don't use them as your e-mail client, but they access your mailbox.

Part two is taking the parsed information and putting it where Word can use it - so that means an Access database, Excel spreadsheet, .txt or .csv file. You will find more options in parsing programs and scripts to go to a .csv or .txt file than Access or Excel. Word can read from any of them, but from a database point of view you might prefer Access or Excel. Your parsing program should place the data there automatically - no action required on your part in opening up the db, etc.

Part 3 will be taking the data out of your database and putting it in to Word. The simple addition of some mail merge fields to your current order form should handle that easily.

This should get you started. Good luck.

[crash]

One quick, dirty and easy solution I did for a client that had a 1 page form which collected name, address, 2 phones, and a few radio checks and needed a text file o/p was to use a simple FP form that wrote to an ascii text file instead of emailing the data.

He would then FTP in and 1) rename the file then 2) download it so he could then take that ascii file to any program and process it as he needed for basically anything.

[AA Best Comfort Guy]

most of the solutions for email parsers mentioned are they Server-side based COM component or ODBS?

My website is colocated, so I am semi-limited on some functions. OR are the email parsers that you talk about is there a certain software company I should investigate?
I run XP PRO and Office XP at home if that helps.

[AA Best Comfort Guy]

Nevermind... I found some. Thanks for the help. I might be back with more?'s.

[Mardi_Gras]

AA Best Comfort Guy - check your stickymail.

[AA Best Comfort Guy]

Thanks all.