Introduction

Microsoft's Access product offers many different capabilities that you can use to implement "workgroup" type applications. The typical uses for Access include database-oriented operations, often in a network environment. How do you share this information between companies, states and even more widely dispersed installations?

The Microsoft® messaging applications programming interface (MAPI) mail transport layer can provide the answer to moving information around the network, ensuring a good deal of fault tolerance in the transfer of the information, etc. From within Access, there are many different things that you can accomplish by implementing your system in a manner that recognizes and uses electronic mail.

First, it's important to understand that the target audience for this paper is the developer that is familiar with the following items:

• Microsoft Access

• The concepts of sending electronic mail messages and messages with attachments using the Microsoft Mail 3.x client

• Calling the Microsoft Windows® API from within Access

This paper will show how you can use not only the built in mail capabilities of Access, but also how to develop and implement your own. When you design your mail components you should think of your system as using an "Electronic Backbone."