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Not a bad idea, George, except it turns out ...
ahem ... that the people who are having the most
difficulties not coincidentally ... cough cough
... run a very old and rickety program to access
their email. They are slowly upgrading to
Outlook. But their habitual way of accessing mail
is like the old CompuServe/AOL way where you'd
dial-up, grab your new mail, then disconnect. I
tried a method that sends a link in an email, and
got buried in a blizzard of emails each week
saying "This method does not work for me! Just
send as an attachment!". Get the drift? It's not
something I have any say over. I'm simply trying
to reduce my overhead when the mailer these folks
use doesn't work right..
-David
> How about including a link to a web page: "If you
> need this resent, click here." Then when they
> click on that link, it downloads the zip file for
> them as the link goes to the zip file in question.
> This is much simpler than what you are asking.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> George
>
"David P. Schwartz" wrote:
>
> I send out some reports attached to emails each
> week. Invariably, a few people complain that
they
> can't open the attachment and they need me to
> re-send it. It's really a major PITA! I'm
> looking for some solution that can handle these
> sort of requests without administrative
> intervention on my part.
>
> Here's one idea I've got. To put some meat on
the
> example, suppose I'm sending out a new recipe
each
> week in an email, and there's an attachment with
> some related stuff in a ZIP file.
>
> So, let's say there's an email address added to
> each distribution list that goes to a "bucket",
> eg., backuplist.recipe@thedomain.com (maybe a
> regular POP3 mailbox is fine). Then, when
people
> can't read an attachment, they'd simply send a
> request to another email address (eg.,
> resend.recipe@thedomain.com) specifying the name
> of the desired recipe's file attachment (or
recipe
> name) in the subject header.
>
> At the other end, "something" would intercept
all
> emails addressed to a users matching the pattern
> "resend.*@thedomain.com" and search through the
> emails in the bucket (or mailbox) for one that
> contains the specified attachment. If found, it
> would be sent out to the sender's email address.
> If not, an error mail would be sent back along
> with a list of all the files it DID find.
>
> A bonus feature would be that it checks the
> request to be sure that the sender's email
address
> is contained somewhere in the header of the mail
> containing the attachment. That way, only
people
> who are on the distribution list could ask for
> files to be re-sent.
>
> Does anybody know of anything that behaves
> remotely similar to this? Or that handles this
> problem in a different way?
>
> TIA!
> -David
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Not a bad idea, George, except it turns out ... ahem ... that the people
who are having the most difficulties not coincidentally ... cough cough
... run a very old and rickety program to access their email. They
are slowly upgrading to Outlook. But their habitual way of accessing
mail is like the old CompuServe/AOL way where you'd dial-up, grab your
new mail, then disconnect. I tried a method that sends a link in
an email, and got buried in a blizzard of emails each week saying "This
method does not work for me! Just send as an attachment!".
Get the drift? It's not something I have any say over. I'm
simply trying to reduce my overhead when the mailer these folks use doesn't
work right..
<p>-David
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>
<pre>How about including a link to a web page: "If you
need this resent, click here." Then when they
click on that link, it downloads the zip file for
them as the link goes to the zip file in question.
This is much simpler than what you are asking.
Just a thought.
George</pre>
</blockquote>
<p><br>"David P. Schwartz" wrote:
<br>>
<br>> I send out some reports attached to emails each
<br>> week. Invariably, a few people complain that they
<br>> can't open the attachment and they need me to
<br>> re-send it. It's really a major PITA! I'm
<br>> looking for some solution that can handle these
<br>> sort of requests without administrative
<br>> intervention on my part.
<br>>
<br>> Here's one idea I've got. To put some meat on the
<br>> example, suppose I'm sending out a new recipe each
<br>> week in an email, and there's an attachment with
<br>> some related stuff in a ZIP file.
<br>>
<br>> So, let's say there's an email address added to
<br>> each distribution list that goes to a "bucket",
<br>> eg.,
backuplist.recipe@thedomain.com (maybe a
<br>> regular POP3 mailbox is fine). Then, when people
<br>> can't read an attachment, they'd simply send a
<br>> request to another email address (eg.,
<br>>
resend.recipe@thedomain.com) specifying the name
<br>> of the desired recipe's file attachment (or recipe
<br>> name) in the subject header.
<br>>
<br>> At the other end, "something" would intercept all
<br>> emails addressed to a users matching the pattern
<br>> "
resend.*@thedomain.com" and search through the
<br>> emails in the bucket (or mailbox) for one that
<br>> contains the specified attachment. If found, it
<br>> would be sent out to the sender's email address.
<br>> If not, an error mail would be sent back along
<br>> with a list of all the files it DID find.
<br>>
<br>> A bonus feature would be that it checks the
<br>> request to be sure that the sender's email address
<br>> is contained somewhere in the header of the mail
<br>> containing the attachment. That way, only people
<br>> who are on the distribution list could ask for
<br>> files to be re-sent.
<br>>
<br>> Does anybody know of anything that behaves
<br>> remotely similar to this? Or that handles this
<br>> problem in a different way?
<br>>
<br>> TIA!
<br>> -David
<br> </html>
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