I want to send a workflow email alert to the address in an email field on a record that is the parent of the record being processed.

There doesn't appear to be a way to do that.  I can reference parent fields all I want in the Formula that qualifies the Workflow.  But in the Email alert, when I select "Email Field", I only get Email fields in the actual record, not parent fields available.

The only work around I have found for this restriction is to write Apex code to copy the email field value of the parent into an email field on the child record.  That is really a pain.  It's never good to copy stuff around.  To keep in sync, both objects need update triggers that cascade update other records.

If a formula field could be of type email, I could define a formula field on the child that references the parent field.  But formula fields can't be type email.  (I added an Idea to allow that. feel free to vote up https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000kwYAAAY.)

Without that feature I can't think of any way to do using definition features, only Apex.

Anyone have any ideas for another workaround for this issue?

Requirement: To create a professional looking dynamic pdf with Headers, Footers Table of Contents, etc. The page needs to be dynamic enough to display multiple sets of records, classified into categories (Won Opportunities, Lost Opportunities, Active Opportunities etc. in a tabular format spanning multiple pages due to the number of records.). 

What I have managed so far is that using this I have managed to insert repeating Headers and Footers and using the css page-break-before property I have managed to insert page breaks where appropriate.

Where I am struggling is to generate a dynamic Table of Contents with indented headers (hyperlinks) and page numbers.

Has anyone come across such requirement? Any help will be much appreciated.

Cheers

Vipul