can email response be formatted?

[kralspace]

Hi all,

I've been building some simple forms where the input is emailed to someone in the company, but they want the email to be formatted neatly...as in tabs or something.

instead of:

name: Shirley Wilson
organization: West High School

they want name and organization flush left and Shirley Wilson and West High School flush with each other as if in a column. I tried to post with it like that, but it reverted to the sample above.

is this even possible?
Thanks, Kathy

[Elizabeth]

Hi Kathy,
You can have the email response sent in HTML format, and that way you can do whatever you want with the formatting. You would just add appropriate HTML tags in the body of the message. As long as the recipient can receive HTML emails then they will be able to see the "cleaned up" email.

Also make sure you set Content-type to text/html (instead of text/plain)

HTH!

-Elizabeth

[kralspace]

Thanks for your help Elizabeth. Today should be interesting working on this. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Thanks again,
Kathy

Onward thru the fog!

[coditoergosum]

If you didn't want to send HTML to the mail client, you could always just use tabs. To get php to insert a tab use \t. Something like this:

<? 
$body = "name:\t\tShirley Wilson\n"; 
$body = $body . "organization: \tWest High School";
mail("[e-mail]", "Subject", "$body"); 
?>

This example inserts two tabs after name:, because organization would probably span at least 1 tab. If that makes sense. Here's an example of what it would output (view source to see the raw text): http://gagon.net/test/tabs.php

This would be quicker and easier than outputting HTML, but you would have much more control with HTML (colors, font sizes, etc).

Hope this helps!

[kralspace]

Thanks so much! That works just beautifully! I looked thru both my php books and these weren't mentioned anywhere except in the headers section and they weren't explained, just there.

I'll buy you a beer when you pass thru central Texas!

Kathy
(the simpler the answer, the better!)

[Elizabeth]

<- also thirsty for some Killians or even a Bud Lite 🙂 LOL

Although, my chances of passing through central Texas are pretty slim at this point... 🙂

-Elizabeth

[coditoergosum]

<homer simpson>Mmmm, beer</homer simpson>

Glad I could help! The chances of me being in central texas anytime soon are also pretty slim... but I might make a special trip for free beer. 😃

[kralspace]

well, I live in a small Czech town and beer is the national beverage here, weddings, showers, funerals, etc. They guage how good the get-together is by how many kegs are available. (I don't drink beer so they figure it's more for them, I'm a cheap winer myself)