>Maybe others could share their experience too, as it's apparently not >uncommon for Emailer to be used as an engine for automated business mail >and database management.
I used to do it via AppleScripts. But I found it tedious and VERY slow in the long run. Now what I do is dump out all the emails in question to a single text file using a script called "Many to Text" (I think that is what it is called, its on my other computer). I got the script from Fog City. That dumps out all the selected emails into a single large text file. Each email is seperated by a line of "***" so you can tell when one ends and the next starts. >From there I write a custome utility in REALbasic. Although probably anything with more speed to its parsing will work just fine, C, Perl, maybe Java... its really just to get away from the speed of AppleScript and to have a little more flexability in writing the parsing rules. I've always found AppleScript to be difficult in that regard (probably due to a lack of knowledge on how to do it right). My REALbasic program will then rip thru the large text file made from the emails and extract what I want and turn it into whatever format I want. Usually Tab delimited. Once it is in a Tab delimited format, I can pull it into Excel or FileMaker and do whatever I want with the data. It seems like a lot of steps, but its really not too bad. And it is MUCH MUCH faster than trying to print and data enter hundreds of emails. (I don't do this with ones that will have low counts over long periods of time, those I just print and let my staff enter by hand in their spare time). I can't quote exact speeds, but on my PM 6500, the Many to Text script could save 1000 emails in probably around 3 to 5 minutes. The REALbasic program would then turn the same 1000 emails into Tab delimited in about 15 seconds. And FileMaker could import them in about another 15 seconds (or Excel open them into a spreadsheet in about 3 seconds). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
