Stephen Wade said:

Whichever company data set my customer opens, if they go to Email Defaults the same email server settings are displayed, obviously these would then have to be applied to e.g. invoice layouts, but they might not see the folder containing the company invoice layouts that they wish to apply those settings to. Or are all the layout folders for the various company data sets accessible from the "Apply" email defaults button?

The user interface does not make it as obvious as it could, but the email client settings are global so if you edit the settings for SMTP or Microsoft Outlook these are stored centrally and not in the report itself. What is stored in the report is the specific email program selected as well as the specific email files and attachments settings. This means that you could have one report that uses SMTP and a different one that uses Microsoft Outlook, but the settings for those email clients would always be shared i.e. if you have 2 reports that specify the same email client they will use the exact same settings e.g. server, port, email, etc, regardless of if they are in the same company or different ones.

Stephen Wade said:

The customer specifically requires different email settings applied to invoice sent from each different company, so the send address, email login and password are all different. 

The only way that would be possible currently would be to have reports in one company set to use SMTP and the other to use Microsoft Outlook, and have the settings configured for each appropriately for the separate companies. Worth logging it as an idea to have support for per-company email client settings though.

Hope that helps

Thanks for your reply.  Can you confirm that if I edit an invoice layout in one company and use the Options, email settings dialogue that these settings i.e. sender address, email username and password and email server and port details are then stored in the actual layout, and so can be different for each layout?  So if I edit a layout in a different company and use different email details in the Options, email settings dialogue these will be applied to the layout in that company and nowhere else?

Yes, that's right. If you are editing a layout and go to the email options for it anything set there is stored within that layout file. Basically this dialog if editing directly in Report Designer

Or this dialog when applying settings from within the Accounts application

This means a change to a layout trough these means will only affect the specific layout(s) you apply this to. Layouts aren't shared between companies by default so this would mean the settings aren't shared either.

What is shared is the email client, so anything you set in this dialog in Report Designer (Tools -> Options)

Or in this dialog in the Accounts application, with the exception of email program field at the top, which is stored within the layout files.

Note that whilst reports largely work in the same manner as layouts they are shared across companies by default so that's a gotcha to be aware of if you also need to apply this to reports.