To my knowledge the format is proprietary and not public. There are pdf printer drivers available, some for free that you can use to create pdfs.

You can email it to yourself and you have the pdf.

If you are having problems with your email and you are a bit more technically adept, the pdf is created in

My Documents\Simply Accounting\forms\CAN2016

or insert year of version you are using. If the email process stops, the file might still be there until you hit a cancel button, then it is deleted.

Nah, emailing is the problem. It is extremely buggy on Windows 10. It works fine, then one day it stops. Frustrating.

I am trying to take it away from MAPI and just make my own smtp direct send. Need access to the Invoice PDF. The 2016 version does NOT create any PDF in documents/Simply Accounting/CAN2016 when pressing emails

My SA folder has "Backups", "forms" and "Messages" in it.

I can get the invoice data but don't want to create a PDF "from scratch", I'd rather use the Email template already in use (and if that gets updated at some point it'll just continue to work).

Thanks,

Erwin

I need to load it in my solution to make a PDF of an invoice.

This may be what you want, it will get you the data to build your PDF:

The software will then generate these CSV files:

Don't change the schema.ini, it is created on installation. 

(edit)

Does anyone know the file format for Simply's .sfm template files?

I tried using the Sage 50 Editor to save an invoice file with different names, then tried a few binary diffs with FC /B.  The results suggest that part of the file may be encrypted, compressed, or just dynamically structured.   It could be Interesting to reverse-engineer it, but unless the time was valued below minimum wage, to do so could cost more than your existing computer systems, the software, and the building they are in.  

Or maybe it's relatively easy to figure out, but as the Dragons Den people say, I won't join you on that journey.

Erwin,

I'm not using Win10, I'm on Win7 right now but I believe it works the same on my Win8.1 machine. I hit the email button in Sage 50 2016.2 and after I confirm the message and email address and hit Send, I get the pdf created in the folder Randy shows in his message. This happens whether you turn on the Export CSV files option or not.

By the time my Outlook security message comes up, the pdf is already there called invoice.pdf. I know your system is not working quite right but maybe the creation of the pdf is the problem you are having and that is why it is not working. When I tell Outlook to Deny, the pdf stays after I get the error messages.

When I use TrackFolderChanges in C:\ and press the email button, the only Invoice.pdf that gets generated is in a temporary folder of my email program. Nothing is getting generated in any Documents or Simply Accounting folders anywhere. Strange.

Thanks RandyW. This is interesting. There seems to be now way, however, to differentiate between a Print job and an Email job? I can monitor that folder for changes, but it would change for every invoice Printed as well...

OK, I see it gets generated in the folder forms/CAN2016 for a split second before my email program snatches it away and puts it in its own temporary folder.

egerrits said:

OK, I see it gets generated in the folder forms/CAN2016 for a split second before my email program snatches it away and puts it in its own temporary folder.

Doesn't this mean then that Sage 50 is doing it's job of getting the pdf to the email program and the problem you might be having is with the email program and how it handles the message Sage 50 sends?  Or is it only doing this when it is working properly?

When it is not working, do you get any error messages?

Can you trace the path of the pdf file when it' s not working or only when it's working?

Can you turn the email program you are using offline so it doesn't send anything in the outbox to see what arrives or to check the location of the created pdf?