Email Reports

• If you are using a webmail service (like Gmail or Hotmail or your ISP's webmail service), send an email to your recipient and attach the BCSS Agreement or report.
• (The following instructions include images from Windows Vista. You may see different but similar views on your computer.)

Create, Save and Email a PDF (Portable Document File)

1. Download and install the free PDFCreator from http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator. (This program will allow you to save, print and email BCSS Reports in PDF format.)
2. Read instructions for PDFCreator configuration.
3. Go to the Desktop and right click anywhere away from icons. Select New then Folder. Enter Customers for a folder name. This will be used later in the following sequence.
4. Prepare a Consignment Agreement or Report in BCSS. (A Consignment Agreement will be presented in 'Print Preview'. Choose one of the print options for Reports to place the Report in Print Preview.)
5. While viewing the Agreement or Report in Print Preview, click the Print Button:

   

   Please note: At one time it was possible to click on the Email Icon (circled in red above) and mail the Report from the Print-Preview Screen. A Windows update somewhere along the way disabled this function on many machines. It might work on yours. Microsoft is aware of this but updating Outlook isn't on the priority list. This is not a malfunction of BCSS. Print Preview and the functions on the Print-Preview Screen are products of Microsoft.

6. The Windows Print-Setup Screen will open.
   
   
7. Click the drop-down arrow (yellow arrow) and select PDFCreator for the printer:

   

8. Click OK. Don't click Mail.
   

   

9. The next screen is an 'input screen' allowing optional entries for Document Properties (Document Title, Creation Date, Modify Date, Author and Keywords and one Email setting (Subject). (Document Properties are only viewable by right-clicking on a PDF file and selecting Properties.)
10. Document Title: During PDFCreator setup, we had the option of entering a default Filename or not. If a Filename was entered in setup, it will appear here as the Document Title. If a Filename was not entered in setup, the Document Title field will be blank. Either way you can enter anything you like in this field. Your entry will become the Document Title and the Filename for the saved document. When searching later for a specific document, it will be easier to find (using Windows Explorer Search) if Document Titles (Filenames) are named with consistency, like lastname-firstname-date as in this example of Johnson-Mary-9-1-2009:
    

    

11. The Creation Date and Modify Date can be left as is. They are 'date/time stamps' and include the year, the day, the month and the time (last 8 digits).
12. The Author will only appear in the PDF Document Properties. This can be set in PDFCreator setup, typed in or left blank.
13. The Subject is the Email Subject. (We've suggested to the provider of this program to label this field as 'Email Subject' and to add an option in setup to enter a default subject.)
14. Keywords are a way of 'tagging' documents so they may be found in Windows Explorer searches searching by keywords. This option may or may not be of use to you. It can be left blank.
15. Take the check out of 'After saving open...' to prevent viewing each document after it is saved.
16. To save the document without emailing it, click Save. Navigate to the folder (named Customers) on the Desktop and click Save again.
17. To save the document then email it, click eMail. Navigate to the folder (named Customers) on the Desktop and click Save again. Click on To in the email that opened and select the recipient from your Address Book. If a Subject was not entered before enter one now and type a message if you like. Click Send.

When emailing reports, it's a handy time saver to have a text file open that contains repetitive phrases that can be copied and pasted into email messages. Outlook also provides for 'signatures' which will be auto-added at the end of email messages. (In Outlook, click on Tools, Options, Mail Format, Signatures. For help, close the Tools screens and click on Help in Outlook and search for signatures.)