Send an email given the SMTP address of an account

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

Example

Note

Helmut Obertanner provided the following code examples. Helmut's expertise is in Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio and Outlook.

The following code examples 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 Primary Interop Assembly, 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 email 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 to send the email, 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 Visual Basic code example, followed by the C# code example.

If you use Visual Studio to test this code example, you must first add a reference to the Microsoft Outlook 15.0 Object Library component and specify the Outlook variable when you import the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook namespace. The Imports or using statement must not occur directly before the functions in the code example but must be added before the public Class declaration. The following lines of code show how to do the import and assignment in Visual Basic and C#.

Imports Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook

using Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook;

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 email.
            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 email 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

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 email.
            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 email address matches, return the account.
                if (account.SmtpAddress == smtpAddress)
                {
                    return account;
                }
            }
            throw new System.Exception(string.Format("No Account with SmtpAddress: {0} exists!", smtpAddress));
        }

    }
}

See also

• Mail