Can someone explain hyperlink field type please?

[reglarh]

Using Access 2010, I have a table the contains a field, MembereMail, that is defined as a hyperlink. I imported data from an Excel spreadsheet which looked to be consistent in format and did not realise that anything was wrong until I wrote some VB code to generate personalised emails with personalised attachments. I then found that some of the hyperlinks worked and some didn't. Those that were essentially text worked, those that were genuine hyperlinks tried and failed to go to addresses prefixed "Mailto:".

I have finally managed to convert all email hyperlinks to text content (although still defined as hyperlinks) and my code works. However when I add a new record to the table through a form, the field still being defined as Hyperlink, it goes in as pure text. I therefore have the need to use the address in both text form and as hyperlink so that the user can click on the field and start an Outlook email as well as my code running correctly for mass mailings.

So a number of questions:

Why does Access not store the email address as a clickable Hyperlink?
How can I satisfy my two requirements from one field?
Can Access 2010 check the input text to ensure that it is a correctly formatted email address?

Any help appreciated!

 

[gemma-the-husky]

normally a hyperlink constitutes a path to a file, or to a web resource, and the hyperlink can determine the file, and the default application used to open the resource

I think that a mail hyperlink shows as mailto: address, and the hyperlink is clever enough to know that mailto opens your default email client.

something like that


maybe your vba code is opening outlook, and sending to the email address, in which case the mailto bit is superfluous.