As featured in the November 2001 Access-VB-SQL Advisor Magazine, SendMail with Class. The SendMailLib COMponent is the product of that article, and is a drop-in replacement for CDONTS (CDO for NT Server). Actually, It's been beefed up a lot bit since it was originally published in that article. It gives you TWO different methods for sending outbound email, and the added bonus of being able to save messages to disk in the same manner as Outlook Express.

The first technique is the same method CDONTS uses for sending unauthenticated email, which can serialize a message to a common "Pickup" folder. Mail Servers such as Microsoft SMTP Service (IIS), Exchange Server, Merak Mail Server, etc., can scoop up messages from this folder and send them in the normal course of business. This can be done in a disconnected manner.

The second method uses a socket to send directly to an SMTP server via the SendMessage method. No Winsock control is required! SendMailLib uses the KillerVB WinsockLib to connect to the remote SMTP server anywhere over the LAN or WAN.

I actually use both. DropMessage saves a copy of my message to disk in the same .EML file format as Outlook Express does, while SendMessage sends the message directly to the SMTP server. It's nice to have a copy of the email for audit purposes. Also, a corporate network might have port 25 blocked except thru certain channels, which would preclude you from connecting directly to an SMTP server. This is becomming more common with large companies scared by recent virus alerts. When this happens, simply use DropMessage to serialize an .EML message to the pickup folder of your mail server (anywhere on the lan).

Mo Betta

Unfortunately, CDONTS.NewMail has a design flaw in that it chokes in tight loops, and frequently errors out on web servers because of multiple threads and CPU's. This is due to it's file naming convention which is based on the current time (FILETIME).

Moreover, it can only be called from a local NT-based server. This shuts out developers that want to use it in their client applications, or who test their ASP pages from a workstation running Personal Web Server (PWS). Big oversight on the CDONTS designers if you ask me (if I can do it, so can they).

Dim Msg         As SendMail

' Build the email message.
Set Msg = New SendMail
With Msg
  
  ' Basic stuff
  .From = "KillerVB<noname@nospam.com>"
  .SendTo = "Joe Customer<noname@nospam.com>"
  .Cc = "Jane Customer<noname@nospam.com>"
  .Body = "Your order has been shipped. Please find attached statement."
  .Subject = "Your order #99"
  .ReplyTo = "Who Cares<noname@whocares.com>"
  
  ' Add some hidden tracking stuff
  .AddHeaderItem "X-CustomerId", "8675309"
  
  ' Add follow-up flag
  .FlagFollowUp = DateAdd("d", 7, Now)
  
  ' Importance
  .Importance = smHighImportance
      
  ' Attach files
  .AttachURL "ftp://MyFtpSite.com/downloads/packslip.gif"
  .AttachFile "c:\temp\stmt.pdf"

  ' Drop it to the IIS or Exchange SMTP Pickup folder:
  .DropMessage "\\ServerName\C$\Inetpub\mailroot\Pickup"

  ' -Or- send it off to an SMTP Server using a socket:
  .SmtpConnect Host:="mail.nospam.com", Port:=25
  .SendMessage
  .Disconnect

End With