Data Changes in Email

[Colleen Adams <colleen_adams -at- MEDISPAN -dot- COM>]

Hi all.
Thanks to all of you who responded to my post on Word to HTML.  I
received some fantastic ideas (which we're still researching).

Another question for all you experts out there:
We've had requests from our customers to start sending out updates to
our data on a weekly basis.  A previous competitor used to do this
through email; however, the information would not always display well
because of different email packages (e.g., rows did not line up correctly
and would wrap).

I originally thought HTML or PDF would be a good solution; however, it
would involve Customer Support (the ones who are going to be
responsible for doing this) learning new tools.

We then thought a better idea would be to make these text files and
attach them to the email message.  That way, the developer could even
cut and paste the codes from the text file directly into his/her source code
and not have to retype them.  However, I'm finding  that the data won't
line up correctly.

Qs:
1) Do you have to worry about text not lining up in a text file?
2) Will the information display just as you set it up (if it's delimited by
spaces)?
3) Does it matter if your customers are on Windows or Unix (will it all look
the same)?
4) Is my only option to go HTML or PDF?
5) Anyone else out there done something similar?

(btw, each update would probably be 2 pages of 3 columns)

Your help is always appreciated!  TIA!

Colleen Adams
External Documentation Manager
First DataBank, Inc.
Indianapolis, IN
colleen_adams -at- medispan -dot- com