Why does this java mail arrive as plain text instead of html at recipient?

Question

I have this code to send an email:

public static void sendHtmlTextWithPlainTextAlternative(final String to,
    final String from, final String subject, final String plainText,
    final String htmlText) throws MessagingException {

    final HtmlEmail email = new HtmlEmail();
    email.setHostName(SMTP);
    try {
        email.addTo(getStringAddresses(to));
        email.setFrom(from);
        email.setSubject(subject);
        email.setHtmlMsg("<html><head></head><body><p>Hello World!</p></body></html>");
        email.setTextMsg("Hello World!");
        email.send();
    } catch (final EmailException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

private static String[] getStringAddresses(final String to) {
    return to.split(" |,|;|\\r?\\n|\\r");
}

But all i get in my email client (Outlook 2010) is a plain text message where I can see the html markup and the alternative plain text or a rich text message that is blank (Outlook 2002).

Here is an excerpt

------=_Part_0_756354128.1364993577885
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_1_48519531.1364993577890"

------=_Part_1_48519531.1364993577890
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!
------=_Part_1_48519531.1364993577890
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<html><head></head><body><p>Hello World!</p></body></html>
------=_Part_1_48519531.1364993577890--

------=_Part_0_756354128.1364993577885--

According to one Exchange Server admin the message should contain something like this at the beginning

0 2.1.5 Recipient OK
DATA
354 Start mail input; end with <CRLF>.<CRLF>

Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_1_933059347.1364987366297"

But it arrives like this (excerpt):

250 2.1.5 Recipient OK
DATA
354 Start mail input; end with <CRLF>.<CRLF>

This is the content preamble.
------=_Part_1_933059347.1364987366297
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_0_1905186593.1364987366295"

The email arrives with an empty subject and an empty recipient list. What could cause this strange behavior?

Which type of mail sending API do you use? Without this information there is little chance to get an answer. — Uwe Plonus, Apr 03 '13 at 13:15
I am surprised that you can call both `email.setHtmlMsg` and `email.setTextMsg`. I would have thought one or the other. Using the java.mail.api directly you can specify multiple parts — Bruno Grieder, Apr 03 '13 at 13:16
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5068827/how-do-i-send-html-email-via-java — tgkprog, Apr 03 '13 at 13:24

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 04 '13 at 07:07

After finding out what to look for the solution was quite simple and I have to thank Cedric Champeau. It was a conflict with geronimo-javamail that was pulled in through another maven dependency. All I had to do was to exclude that dependency: Apache CXF + Maven + Javamail + Log4J (update)

tgkprog · Answer 2 · 2013-04-03T13:35:51.347

0

I see your using apache commons?

Try removing the head and body tag

So you will have

    email.setHtmlMsg("<html><p>Hello World!</p></html>");

Another thing that should not make a difference but you can try is setting correct valur for email.setHostName("mail.myserver.com");

Ref commons eml user guide

And send the mail to a gmail account, maybe the server has a setting to only allow text and its removing html? Can you send the same mail id html from gmail (rich formatting) ?

edited Apr 03 '13 at 13:35

answered Apr 03 '13 at 13:29

tgkprog

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I tested the same code in a self contained project. There it works. – mrt181 Apr 03 '13 at 13:33
and when you send from the test project the msg on the server has the extra header? is it same version of apache commons? Check classpath or if its repeated when starting your app and test project use java -verbose so java tells you where each package is loaded from - see if same version. – tgkprog Apr 03 '13 at 13:38
it's a local problem in the maven project. When I use only apache-commons in its own maven project than it works. – mrt181 Apr 03 '13 at 13:59

Why does this java mail arrive as plain text instead of html at recipient?

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