[RESOLVED] email without mail server

[scottlafoy]

I would like to know if it is possible to have a user of my program to send an email to my email account (yahoo.ca). I just want a text box for the user to write a message and a send button to send it. most users will be on their home computers without mail servers. I know I could bring up outlook to send the mail, but I would prefer to just have the text box and send button and nothing else "pop up"

Thank you in advance,

[Pezster]

If you go php then yeah. You would need ftp access to a php enabled site. This the way I use.

http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/php_mail.asp

[technorobbo]

Check out MartinLiss' MAPI app - might give you Ideas

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...highlight=MAPI

[scottlafoy]

Thanks, I will take a look at that and see what I can do.

[westconn1]

most users on home computers have stmp server access through their internet service provider,

[scottlafoy]

Well I have looked around and tried all sorts of things, I even opened a gmail account to send mail through but they all seem way to complicated for me. I am settling on an outlook solution. Below is my code:

Private Sub Command6_Click()
Dim objOutlook As Object
Dim objOutlookMsg As Object
Set objOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set objOutlookMsg = objOutlook.CreateItem(0)
With objOutlookMsg
.To = "[email protected]  "

.Subject = "Hello"
.Body = "This is the body of message"
.HTMLBody = "HTML version of message"

.Send      'send the mail
End With
Set objOutlookMsg = Nothing
Set objOutlook = Nothing
End Sub

I am getting an error when I send the email, on the .send line. it says: unable to perform the operation. File access is denied. you do not have the permission required to access the file D:\bla\bla\bla\outlook.pst

is the error from my code? or is there something wrong with the setup of outlook?

[westconn1]

are you logged into windows as administrator?
are you running on vista operating system?

sending through a gmail account using cdo.message is simple in XP, but every type of emailing is more difficult in vista

[scottlafoy]

I am running on xp I have administrative proporties on my account. It is my computer. Some people might use vista to run my program but not many. I have tried a few different ways of using gmail but nothing works so far. I will go look for a tutorial on it.

[isnoend07]

I have the same issue in this post:
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=559845
I have decided to purchase a ocx
Here: http://www.emailarchitect.net/webapp/smtpcom/
I tried this one and it did work on vista
and here: http://www.perfectionbytes.com/porta...n/pricing.aspx
They both replied to my emails saying they will work on windows 7

[dilettante]

The first of those appears to have a "cheat mode" that attempts to bypass the public email network by doing an MX lookup on the recipient and directly relaying to the recipient's email server.

Many email servers will not trust these random relays and will reject such connections. My home ISP (one of the largest in the U.S.) also proxies anything on outbound TCP port 25, redirecting it to their email server. If the credentials aren't valid (user/pw) the email send will fail from here.

I hope you get your money's worth, but personally I suspect you are still going to have problems. Those operating email servers work very hard to reduce spam, and this has pretty much crippled the mail network for random messaging. Usually email only gets through if you follow very specific protocols to ensure it was human-originated or as close as possible.

[isnoend07]

The first of those appears to have a "cheat mode" that attempts to bypass the public email network by doing an MX lookup on the recipient and directly relaying to the recipient's email server.

Many email servers will not trust these random relays and will reject such connections. My home ISP (one of the largest in the U.S.) also proxies anything on outbound TCP port 25, redirecting it to their email server. If the credentials aren't valid (user/pw) the email send will fail from here.

I hope you get your money's worth, but personally I suspect you are still going to have problems. Those operating email servers work very hard to reduce spam, and this has pretty much crippled the mail network for random messaging. Usually email only gets through if you follow very specific protocols to ensure it was human-originated or as close as possible.

thanks for the info, if you are correct then i'm running out of options. The only other way would be to provide them with an online email server.

[dilettante]

The options are frustratingly slim.

Some people find that they have to sign up with an intermediate email hosting service that listens on an alternate SMTP port (often 587). I think this is one such host:

E-mail - MSA / Alternate port SMTP service

In the future people may move to things like Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) but it is only practical for "phone home" messaging like crash reports and such. It can't send emails to arbirtrary recipients, and doesn't actually handle email as such at all.

[Nightwalker83]

Well I have looked around and tried all sorts of things, I even opened a gmail account to send mail through but they all seem way to complicated for me. I am settling on an outlook solution.

Here is a program I created in VB 6.0 maybe you can get something from it!

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=557488

[dilettante]

Going back to square one, what sort of emailing do you need to do?

If you want to have your program initiate email from your clients to their customers that puts some real constraints on things. For example Amazon SQS and an alternate port SMTP service are both useless then.

Ultimately you'll need to require that your clients have an SMTP account (not just web mail like Yahoo, etc.). You'll also have to ask them to configure their email host, user, pw, etc. for your program just as required to set up their account on Outlook Express.

As I said in the other thread, CDO cannot get the account info from Windows Mail in Vista as it did from Outlook Express on XP and Win2K. At least not that I have been able to determine.

And in Windows 7 you don't get either Outlook Express or Windows Mail. You have to install Windows Live Mail or a 3rd party email client. I suspect that CDO can't see the default email account config info there either, but I haven't tried.

[scottlafoy]

Thank you Nightwalker83 I will take a look at that. Some one mentioned a "phone home" thing. That is basically what I am doing. Users of my program to send me and email. The message will go to me and no one else.

[isnoend07]

The options are frustratingly slim.

Some people find that they have to sign up with an intermediate email hosting service that listens on an alternate SMTP port (often 587). I think this is one such host:

E-mail - MSA / Alternate port SMTP service

In the future people may move to things like Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) but it is only practical for "phone home" messaging like crash reports and such. It can't send emails to arbirtrary recipients, and doesn't actually handle email as such at all.

Thanks for the information
I am trying to get my app to run on vista and this is holding me up. for the time being when they click to email a contract, invoice etc a message will inform them it is only supported in xp

[dilettante]

Have you considered MAPI instead of CDO? This should work for the majority of desktop email clients. I believe it will present other limitations though, like popping up the email for the user to modify/send before it actually goes.

Demo using the VB6 MAPI controls:

Option Explicit

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Show
    MAPISession1.SignOn
    With MAPIMessages1
        .SessionID = MAPISession1.SessionID
        .Compose
        .RecipAddress = "[email protected]"
        .MsgSubject = "Hello, testing"
        .MsgNoteText = "Testing, testing." & vbNewLine _
                     & "This is a test."
        .Send False
    End With
    MsgBox "Done"
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
    MAPISession1.SignOff
End Sub

Seems to work on Vista just fine. Windows Mail pops up a warning for the user to Ok.

[isnoend07]

Have you considered MAPI instead of CDO? This should work for the majority of desktop email clients. I believe it will present other limitations though, like popping up the email for the user to modify/send before it actually goes.

Demo using the VB6 MAPI controls:

Option Explicit

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Show
    MAPISession1.SignOn
    With MAPIMessages1
        .SessionID = MAPISession1.SessionID
        .Compose
        .RecipAddress = "[email protected]"
        .MsgSubject = "Hello, testing"
        .MsgNoteText = "Testing, testing." & vbNewLine _
                     & "This is a test."
        .Send False
    End With
    MsgBox "Done"
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
    MAPISession1.SignOff
End Sub

Seems to work on Vista just fine. Windows Mail pops up a warning for the user to Ok.

Thanks i will try it. Can it send attachments?

[dilettante]

I have not tried to send attachments, but from the manual it seems capable of it.

[Nightwalker83]

I have not tried to send attachments, but from the manual it seems capable of it.

My code I linked to in post #13 uses the mapi control!

[westconn1]

MAPI requires an mapi enabled email client to be installed, such as Outlook
attachments can be added in the attachments collection,

one consideration is to use a gmail account, as cdo has to be fully configured to send to it, it will not rely on default configurations, but the configuration would be the same for all accounts, apart from username and password, an account could be set up at gmail for each user, who subscribes to your program

[scottlafoy]

one consideration is to use a gmail account, as cdo has to be fully configured to send to it, it will not rely on default configurations, but the configuration would be the same for all accounts, apart from username and password, an account could be set up at gmail for each user, who subscribes to your program

What about setting up one gmail account and every copy of the program uses that hard coded to send me and email, the only variable being a text box where they type me a message. I have been trying to do something like that but I cannot make anything work.

[westconn1]

What about setting up one gmail account and every copy of the program uses that hard coded to send me and email, the only variable being a text box where they type me a message. I have been trying to do something like that but I cannot make anything work.

that is an easy solution
only downside i know, which probably won't affect you is gmail will not allow to spoof the return address, so the return address would always be the gmail account, here is the sample code

      Set objmessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
      objmessage.Subject = "Example CDO Message"
      objmessage.From = "[email protected]"
      objmessage.To = "me" ' sent to myself, not at gmail, use a valid email address
      objmessage.TextBody = "This is some sample message text."
       
       objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
       
      'Name or IP of Remote SMTP Server
       
       
      'Type of authentication, NONE, Basic (Base64 encoded), NTLM
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate") = 1
      'Your UserID on the SMTP server
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername") = "usernm"
       
      'Your password on the SMTP server
       
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword") = "pass"
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.mail.gmx.com"
      'Server port (typically 25)
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 587
      'Use SSL for the connection (False or True)
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl") = false
      'Connection Timeout in seconds (the maximum time CDO will try to establish a connection to the SMTP server)
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpconnectiontimeout") = 30
      objmessage.Configuration.Fields.Update
      objmessage.Send
      Set objmessage = Nothing 



' gmail configuration
Set objConfig = CreateObject("cdo.configuration")
Set Flds = objConfig.Fields

schema = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusing") = 2
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserver") = "smtp.gmail.com"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserverport") = 465
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpauthenticate") = 1
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusername") = "mailaddress"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendpassword") = "password"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpusessl") = 1
Flds.Update

Set objMessage.Configuration = objConfig

this has configuration for gmail at the bottom and gmx, both are free mail servers, gmx will allow more types of attachments, gmail does not allow exe and some other types as attachments
neither of these use the default port of 25, so is less likely to be prevented by isp blocking port 25, gmail uses ssl (secure sockets layer)

[isnoend07]

One other alternative which you may not want is what i have done, where the emails only get sent to me.
I hired a renta coder that created an ocx that sends emails from my app thru
my online jMail component on my website. I use this for users to send recommendations, and silently sending any error reports. The nice thing is they do give any email info at all. One other nice thing about this is I also receive all their computer details, app.path, OS etc

[scottlafoy]

Thank you for all the replies, I sure like the sound of that OCX but I think rent a coder is out of my price range.
westconn1 I am trying the code you posted and I am obviously miss-using it. I get a "transport failed to connect to server" error on the objmessage.send line.

Private Sub Command1_Click()
 Set objMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
      objMessage.Subject = "Example CDO Message"
      objMessage.From = "[email protected]"
      objMessage.To = "[email protected]" ' sent to myself, not at gmail
      objMessage.TextBody = "This is some sample message text."
       
       objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
       
      'Name or IP of Remote SMTP Server
       'Type of authentication, NONE, Basic (Base64 encoded), NTLM
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate") = 1
      'Your UserID on the SMTP server
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername") = "scottstimetracker"
       
      'Your password on the SMTP server
       
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword") = "******"
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.mail.gmx.com"
      'Server port (typically 25)
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 587
      'Use SSL for the connection (False or True)
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl") = False
      'Connection Timeout in seconds (the maximum time CDO will try to establish a connection to the SMTP server)
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
      ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpconnectiontimeout") = 30
      objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Update
      objMessage.Send
      Set objMessage = Nothing



' gmail configuration
Set objConfig = CreateObject("cdo.configuration")
Set Flds = objConfig.Fields

schema = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusing") = 2
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserver") = "smtp.gmail.com"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserverport") = 465
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpauthenticate") = 1
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusername") = "[email protected]"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendpassword") = "*******"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpusessl") = 1
Flds.Update

Set objMessage.Configuration = objConfig
End Sub

[westconn1]

looks like you are using the gmail part after you have send. you need to set all the configuration for the server you are using, before sending

the code contained configurations for 2 free email hosts, you only need to set up for one
i have successfully used both email services
if you want me to test code for you pm me your password

[scottlafoy]

Thank you all, the solution above from westconn1 works. I can finally put this tread to rest.