How to: Send an E-mail Given the SMTP Address of an Account

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Outlook Developer Reference

This topic shows how to create an e-mail and send it from a Microsoft Outlook account, given the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) address of that account.

MVP logo Helmut Obertanner provided the following code samples. Helmut is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional with expertise in Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office and Microsoft Office Outlook. Helmut maintains a professional site at http://www.outlooksharp.de/.

The following managed code samples are written in C# and Visual Basic. To run a .NET Framework managed code sample that needs to call into a Component Object Model (COM), you must use an interop assembly that defines and maps managed interfaces to the COM objects in the object model type library. For Outlook, you can use Microsoft Visual Studio and the Microsoft Office Outlook Primary Interop Assembly (PIA). Before you run managed code samples for Outlook 2007, ensure that you have installed the Outlook 2007 PIA and have added a reference to the Microsoft Outlook 12.0 Object Library component in Visual Studio. For more information about using the Outlook PIA to develop managed Outlook solutions, see Welcome to the Outlook 2007 Primary Interop Assembly Reference.

The following code samples contain the SendEmailFromAccount and GetAccountForEmailAddress methods of the Sample class, implemented as part of an Outlook add-in project. Each project adds a reference to the Outlook PIA, which is based on the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook namespace. The SendEmailFromAccount method accepts as input arguments a trusted Application object, and strings that represent the subject, body, a semicolon-delimited list of recipients, and the SMTP address of an e-mail account. SendEmailFromAccount creates a MailItem object and initializes the To, Subject, and Body properties with the given arguments. To find the Account object from which the e-mail should be sent, SendEmailFromAccount calls the GetAccountForEmailAddress method, which matches the given SMTP address with the SmtpAddress property of each account for the current profile. The matching Account object is returned to SendEmailFromAccount, which then initializes the SendUsingAccount property of the MailItem with this Account object, and sends the MailItem.

The following is the C# code sample.

  using System;
using System.Text;
using Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook;

namespace OutlookAddIn1
{
class Sample
{
public static void SendEmailFromAccount(Outlook.Application application, string subject, string body, string to, string smtpAddress)
{


        // Create a new MailItem and set the To, Subject, and Body properties.
        Outlook.MailItem newMail = (Outlook.MailItem)application.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem);
        newMail.To = to;
        newMail.Subject = subject;
        newMail.Body = body;

        // Retrieve the account that has the specific SMTP address.
        Outlook.Account account = GetAccountForEmailAddress(application, smtpAddress);
        // Use this account to send the e-mail.
        newMail.SendUsingAccount = account;
        newMail.Send();
    }


    public static Outlook.Account GetAccountForEmailAddress(Outlook.Application application, string smtpAddress)
    {

        // Loop over the Accounts collection of the current Outlook session.
        Outlook.Accounts accounts = application.Session.Accounts;
        foreach (Outlook.Account account in accounts)
        {
            // When the e-mail address matches, return the account.
            if (account.SmtpAddress == smtpAddress)
            {
                return account;
            }
        }
        throw new System.Exception(string.Format("No Account with SmtpAddress: {0} exists!", smtpAddress));
    }

}



}

The following is the Visual Basic code sample.

  Imports Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook

Namespace OutlookAddIn2
Class Sample


    Shared Sub SendEmailFromAccount(ByVal application As Outlook.Application, _
        ByVal subject As String, ByVal body As String, ByVal recipients As String, ByVal smtpAddress As String)

        ' Create a new MailItem and set the To, Subject and Body properties.
        Dim newMail As Outlook.MailItem = DirectCast(application.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem), Outlook.MailItem)
        newMail.To = recipients
        newMail.Subject = subject
        newMail.Body = body

        ' Retrieve the account that has the specific SMTP address.
        Dim account As Outlook.Account = GetAccountForEmailAddress(application, smtpAddress)
        ' Use this account to send the e-mail.
        newMail.SendUsingAccount = account
        newMail.Send()
    End Sub

    Shared Function GetAccountForEmailAddress(ByVal application As Outlook.Application, ByVal smtpAddress As String) As Outlook.Account

        ' Loop over the Accounts collection of the current Outlook session.
        Dim accounts As Outlook.Accounts = application.Session.Accounts
        Dim account As Outlook.Account
        For Each account In accounts
            ' When the e-mail address matches, return the account.
            If account.SmtpAddress = smtpAddress Then
                Return account
            End If
        Next
        Throw New System.Exception(String.Format("No Account with SmtpAddress: {0} exists!", smtpAddress))
    End Function

End Class



End Namespace