C# MailTo with Attachment?

Question

Currently I am using the below method to open the users outlook email account and populate an email with the relevant content for sending:

public void SendSupportEmail(string emailAddress, string subject, string body)
{
   Process.Start("mailto:" + emailAddress + "?subject=" + subject + "&body=" 
                + body);
}

I want to however, be able to populate the email with an attached file.

something like:

public void SendSupportEmail(string emailAddress, string subject, string body)
{
   Process.Start("mailto:" + emailAddress + "?subject=" + subject + "&body=" 
      + body + "&Attach="
      + @"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\stuff.txt");
}

However this does not seem to work. Does anyone know of a way which will allow this to work!?

Help greatly appreciate.

Regards.

Duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/q/20328598/5389585 – sondra.kinsey Mar 04 '21 at 21:17 — sondra.kinsey, Mar 04 '21 at 21:17

score 57 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 29 '09 at 20:14

57

If you want to access the default email client then you can use MAPI32.dll (works on Windows OS only). Take a look at the following wrapper:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/SendFileToNET.aspx

Code looks like this:

MAPI mapi = new MAPI();
mapi.AddAttachment("c:\\temp\\file1.txt");
mapi.AddAttachment("c:\\temp\\file2.txt");
mapi.AddRecipientTo("person1@somewhere.com");
mapi.AddRecipientTo("person2@somewhere.com");
mapi.SendMailPopup("testing", "body text");

// Or if you want try and do a direct send without displaying the mail dialog
// mapi.SendMailDirect("testing", "body text");

answered Aug 29 '09 at 20:14

Alex

755
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4

This code is useful for sending attachments to the default email client. Not everyone uses Outlook, so this code is great! – Brent Mar 06 '10 at 19:50
This throws an AccessViolationException when I attach a file. – Sinaesthetic Dec 27 '15 at 20:29
Nice reference! Should be the standard way to do it. – LueTm Jan 23 '17 at 12:14
1

If your mail client is already running, you will need to make sure that your mail client and your program are running with the same privileges. For instance, if Outlook is running as Admin, your application that uses this `MAPI` class you need to run as Admin as well. Otherwise, you may get `MAPISendMail fails and returns error code 2` – Daniel Bonetti Jul 07 '17 at 13:34
Does Mapi works with Web Application ? – It's Siddiqi Feb 15 '22 at 13:27

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 15 '17 at 17:52

mailto: doesn't officially support attachments. I've heard Outlook 2003 will work with this syntax:

<a href='mailto:name@domain.com?Subject=SubjTxt&Body=Bod_Txt&Attachment=""C:\file.txt"" '>

A better way to handle this is to send the mail on the server using System.Net.Mail.Attachment.

    public static void CreateMessageWithAttachment(string server)
    {
        // Specify the file to be attached and sent.
        // This example assumes that a file named Data.xls exists in the
        // current working directory.
        string file = "data.xls";
        // Create a message and set up the recipients.
        MailMessage message = new MailMessage(
           "jane@contoso.com",
           "ben@contoso.com",
           "Quarterly data report.",
           "See the attached spreadsheet.");

        // Create  the file attachment for this e-mail message.
        Attachment data = new Attachment(file, MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet);
        // Add time stamp information for the file.
        ContentDisposition disposition = data.ContentDisposition;
        disposition.CreationDate = System.IO.File.GetCreationTime(file);
        disposition.ModificationDate = System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(file);
        disposition.ReadDate = System.IO.File.GetLastAccessTime(file);
        // Add the file attachment to this e-mail message.
        message.Attachments.Add(data);

        //Send the message.
        SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient(server);
        // Add credentials if the SMTP server requires them.
        client.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;

        try {
          client.Send(message);
        }
        catch (Exception ex) {
          Console.WriteLine("Exception caught in CreateMessageWithAttachment(): {0}", 
                ex.ToString() );              
        }
        data.Dispose();
    }

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 28 '09 at 16:09

Does this app really need to use Outlook? Is there a reason for not using the System.Net.Mail namespace?

If you really do need to use Outlook ( and I would not recommend it because then you're basing your app on 3rd party dependencies that are likely to change) you will need to look into the Microsoft.Office namespaces

I'd start here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.interop.outlook.aspx

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 27 '14 at 13:22

Try this

var proc = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
proc.StartInfo.FileName = string.Format("\"{0}\"", Process.GetProcessesByName("OUTLOOK")[0].Modules[0].FileName);
proc.StartInfo.Arguments = string.Format(" /c ipm.note /m {0} /a \"{1}\"", "someone@somewhere.com", @"c:\attachments\file.txt");
proc.Start();

C# MailTo with Attachment?

4 Answers4

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