VB Forum / Win API / May 2007

Yeah, but it's not going to be pretty. The code's not bad. In fact, it's
very simple. What's ugly is that Outlook is going to prompt the user for
permission to send the email (MS's way of stopping spam). Now if that's OK
for you (and more so, your users), then you merely need to use Automation
with Outlook to do it.

Here's something I wrote from quite a while ago (I don't claim it's the
greatest example):

-----
Public Function SendOutlookMail(ByVal sTo As String, sSubject As String,
sBody As String) As Boolean

   On Error GoTo EH

   Dim oOLApp              As Object
   Dim oOLMailItem         As Object
   Dim lPosition           As Long
   Dim sErrMsg             As String

   sErrMsg = "Unable to find Microsoft Outlook"
   Set oOLApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

   sErrMsg = "Unable to create message in Outlook"
   Set oOLMailItem = oOLApp.CreateItem(olMailItem)

   oOLMailItem.Subject = sSubject

   sErrMsg = "Unable to interpret email address(es): " & sTo
   Do
       lPosition = InStr(1, sTo, ",")
       If lPosition = 0 Then
           oOLMailItem.Recipients.Add sTo
       Else
           oOLMailItem.Recipients.Add Mid$(sTo, 1, lPosition - 1)
           sTo = Right$(sTo, Len(sTo) - lPosition)
       End If
   Loop Until lPosition = 0

   oOLMailItem.Body = sBody

   sErrMsg = "Unable to send message"
   oOLMailItem.Send
   oOLMailItem.Display

   SendOutlookMail = True
   Exit Function

EH:
   MsgBox sErrMsg & vbCrLf & "(" & Err.Number & ": " & Err.Description &
")"
   SendOutlookMail = False

End Function
-----

Note that this both sends AND displays (for the sender) the email. Normally,
you'd really only want to use the Send method OR the Display method, not
both.  Also note that multiple recipients should be separated by commas (or
change the code to use whatever separater character(s) you want).

For more detailed information, consult Outlook's Help on its object model.
I believe this is part of the VBA Help in Outlook.

You also might want to consider alternatives that don't rely on Outlook. One
possibility would be CDO, which is part of Windows 2000 and greater. Using
CDO, you can send email vai the user's SMTP server and this also bypasses
Outlook's "security" (so users won't be prompted for their permission to
send the email). Plus, and maybe this is irrelevant for you in this
particular case, your program's not dependent on Outlook being installed. If
you want help with CDO, just search the VB-related newsgroups at google on
"CDO".  You'll find tons of example code (and some messages regarding
problems, as always).

If you don't mind seeing the default mail client, you could just try the
mailto: protocol, e.g.

Public Sub SendEmail(hWnd As Long, sEmail As String, sSubject As String,
sBody As String)
' Sends an email message using the curent default email client
Dim sUrl As String

   sUrl = "mailto:" & sEmail & "?subject=" & sURLEscape(sSubject) & _
       "&body=" & sURLEscape(sBody)
   ShellExecute hWnd, vbNullString, sUrl, vbNullString, App.Path,
SW_SHOWNORMAL
End Sub

That's about as simple as it gets. Everything else is much more difficult

   Tony Proctor