how do you send email from R

Question

I want to send emails from R. This is what I have so far:

library(sendmailR)


from <- "eamil@example.com"
to <- "email2@example.com"
subject <- "Performance Result"
body <- "This is the result of the test:"                     
mailControl=list(smtpServer="snmpt server address")

sendmail(from=from,to=to,subject=subject,msg=body,control=mailControl)

When I execute this script, my R session hangs. Any ideas what might be happening?

Answer 1

If you need to be able to use an smtp server with authentication you can use the mailR package.

For example using gmail's smtp server:

library(mailR)
sender <- "SENDER@gmail.com"
recipients <- c("RECIPIENT@gmail.com")
send.mail(from = sender,
          to = recipients,
          subject = "Subject of the email",
          body = "Body of the email",
          smtp = list(host.name = "smtp.gmail.com", port = 465, 
                      user.name = "YOURUSERNAME@gmail.com",            
                      passwd = "YOURPASSWORD", ssl = TRUE),
          authenticate = TRUE,
          send = TRUE)

Answer 2

I just tried it out, and it worked for me.

My only differences were I used <> for the from and to:

from = "<email1@dal.ca>"
to = "<email2@gmail.com>"

and my mail control was different, I used

control=list(smtpServer="ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM"))

Answer 3

Sorry for bumping up this thread. If you want to send email from R using Microsoft outlook, below is the way to go using the RDCOMClient package. I myself spent a lot of time trying to find an answer on this. I thought it would be useful to have this solution too in this thread for users.

Full credit to @agstudy who provided the original solution in this link - Sending email in R via outlook

library (RDCOMClient)

OutApp <- COMCreate("Outlook.Application")
outMail = OutApp$CreateItem(0)
outMail[["To"]] = "test@test.com"
outMail[["subject"]] = "Test Subject"
outMail[["body"]] = "Body of email"               
outMail$Send()

Answer 4

library(mailR)
sender <- "abc@gmail.com"

recipients <- c("bcd@gmail.com","xyz@gmail.com")

send.mail(
    from = sender, 
     to = recipients, 
     subject="Cash_Collected_Bank_transfer",
     Sys.Date(),
     "{}", body = Summary1, encoding = "utf-8", smtp = 
         list(host.name = "smtp.gmail.com", port = 465, 
         user.name="abc@gmail.com", passwd="abc@1234", ssl=TRUE), 
     authenticate = TRUE, send = TRUE ,
     attach.files = c(path2), html = TRUE , inline = TRUE )

Answer 5

There is a new package called emayili with two very interesting promises:

• works on all manner of SMTP servers
• has minimal dependencies (or dependencies which are easily satisfied)

It seems early stages but promising nonetheless. Sending email is as simple as:

devtools::install_github("datawookie/emayili")
library(emayili)
library(dplyr)

email <- envelope() %>%
  from("alice@yahoo.com") %>%
  to("bob@google.com") %>%
  subject("This is a plain text message!") %>%
  body("Hello!")

smtp <- server(host = "smtp.gmail.com",
               port = 465,
               username = "bob@gmail.com",
               password = "bd40ef6d4a9413de9c1318a65cbae5d7")

smtp(email, verbose = TRUE)

Answer 6

There are two ways to send an email via Gmail, anonymized or authenticated. Here is the code for anonymized:

library(mailR)
send.mail(from = "sender@gmail.com",
      to = c("Recipient 1 <recipient1@gmail.com>", "recipient2@gmail.com"),
      cc = c("CC Recipient <cc.recipient@gmail.com>"),
      bcc = c("BCC Recipient <bcc.recipient@gmail.com>"),
      subject = "Subject of the email",
      body = "Body of the email",
      smtp = list(host.name = "aspmx.l.google.com", port = 25),
      authenticate = FALSE,
      send = TRUE)

Make sure the recipient emails are Gmail too. It most likely goes to the spam folder in the Gmail account so make sure to mark it "not spammed".

You can find more info here.

Answer 7

I found the simplest way in Ubuntu is to run the one liner Terminal command in R. No need for password.

try(system("mutt -s 'Run is complete.' youremail@anymail.com < /dev/null", intern = TRUE))

You will need to install mutt in terminal before this.

Answer 8

If you prefer an in-house solution with your server, you can call the linux sendmail.

EMAIL <- myEmail@gmail.com
cmd <- 'subject="Info server";body="This is an email"'
cmd <- paste("echo -e \"Subject:${subject}\n${body}\" | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t \"", EMAIL, "\"")
system(cmd)      

Answer 9

We can use blastula package from RStudio (Posit) for this. https://github.com/rstudio/blastula

I have tested this with my gmail account and it works well. The benefit of this package is that we can insert Markdown text, block-based components, and even HTML fragments. The resulting email message is responsive so it’ll look great on both large displays and mobile devices.

library(blastula)

date_time <- add_readable_time()

email <-
  compose_email(
    body = md(glue::glue(
      "Hello, 
      This is to let you know that I could successfully send an email from R. 
")),
    footer = md(glue::glue("Email sent on {date_time}."))
  )

You can run email in the console to see how the mail would look.

Send the email -

email |>
  smtp_send(
    to = "toemail@ygmail.com",
    from = "fromemail@gmail.com",
    subject = "Test Email",
    credentials = creds_file("gmail_creds")
  )

Before running the above line with smtp_send please go through the initial one time setup steps below which is important to send an email.

---

What is gmail_creds ?

gmail_creds is a file where your google account information is saved.

How to create gmail_creds file?

Now if you are using blastula package for the first time you need to give it permission to your email. For that create an app password from https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords . Note that, you will be allowed to create an app password only if you have turned on 2-factor authentication. Copy the app password generated from google.

Come back to R and run

create_smtp_creds_key(id = "gmail_creds",
                      provider = "gmail",
                      user = "fromemail@gmail.com")

A prompt would appear asking you to enter the password for fromemail@gmail.com. This is where you enter the app password that you had copied in the previous step.

Now you are good to send emails from R. You can run smtp_send function to send emails.