using the shell to popup default email client

[cmitulescu]

Hi,
I have a button on my form that when clicked it pops-up the default email client with a few of it's field filled such as "Subject" and "body".

Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" _
(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpszOp As String, _
ByVal lpszFile As String, ByVal lpszParams As String, _
ByVal LpszDir As String, ByVal FsShowCmd As Long) _
As Long
Private Const SW_SHOWNORMAL = 1




Private Sub Send_Click()
Dim l As Long
l = ShellExecute(Me.hwnd, "Open", "mailto:?Subject=Hello&Body=Thought you would like to download this ." + Chr(13) + "PC users here - download the file to your desktop and start using. ", "", "C:\", SW_SHOWNORMAL)
End Sub


The problem is that I would like to format the text in the body of the message but do not know what character to insert in order to get sentences on new lines in the body section. I tried using Chr(13) also "\n" and "\r" but none of them worked.

I am assuming that most of the users will have Outlook or Outlook Express as their email client and was wondering if anyone could help me find out how to do it.

Thank you

[Gavin_Mannion]

Have you tried CRLF?

Works for me in other instances..

hth
Gavin

[Hack]

I believe he means vbCrLf

I've done similiar things, and have discovered that if I use a Richtextbox for my users to create the message that my code will pop into the message area of an EMail, I have a lot more formatting options that just using a standard text box.

Richtextboxes support a lot more features than a standard, such as carriage return/line feeds, bolding, etc.

[Gavin_Mannion]

Originally posted by Hack
I believe he means vbCrLf

Well actually no, I use just plain CRLF and it works, is there any difference between the 2 or should I just put the VB infront for best practice reasons?

[cmitulescu]

none of the suggested characters worked. It sounds like a sound ideea to use a a Richtextbox but the text is not going to be typed by the user. It is preset text. Please help as I have the deadline for Monday. Cheers

[eiSecure]

Well, you could always load it into a regular textbox with multiline set to true. You could then hide the textbox from the user by setting it's visible property to false. Then, you could just load it in.

[cmitulescu]

I tried it but it does not work. How do I get Richtextbox into my project?

[eiSecure]

Right-click on your toolbox. Select Components..., and check off MS RichEdit (something like that, forgot exact name).

Then, click OK.

[cmitulescu]

i set the Text of the control to "blablabla"+ vbCrLf +"blablabla" and when I popup the email client (Outlook Express) i use RichEdit1.Text as the body of the message and it all appears on only one line. Is it possible for you to show me what string you would set the Rich edit text to? Thanks

[eiSecure]

...I would use the & operator instead of the + operator.

[eiSecure]

Does changing the constant to vbNewLine work?

[cmitulescu]

still no luck. I do not understand why

[eiSecure]

Me neither...

[nfo1212]

This thread is a bit old but I found the solution for your (and my) problem.

'****************************************************************************
'
'                   PUBLIC CONSTANT FOR A LINE BREAK IN SHELLEXECUTE-
'                   GENERATED EMAIL USING HEX VALUES
'****************************************************************************
Public Const mailNewLine = "%0D%0A"

just use the mailNewLine like you would vbCrLf ("blah" & mailNewLine & "blah")

[cmitulescu]

thanks, I just about managed to find it also.I think I was looking in the wrong place(VB documentation) when that character is a "mailto" protocol!?
On the Netscape site I only found "%0A" as a new line. What is the other character "%0D"?