Send HTML Email in VB.NET

In previous section, I introduced how to send email without SMTP server. In this section, I will introduce how to compose and send HTML email in VB.NET.

Introduction

If you want to specify the font, color or insert pictures in your email, you should use Html email format instead of Plain text email format.

Note

Remarks: All of samples in this section are based on first section: Send email in a simple VB.NET project. To compile and run the following example codes successfully, please click here to learn how to create the test project and add reference of EASendMail to your project.

[VB.NET- Send HTML Email - Example]

The following example codes demonstrate how to send email in HTML body format in VB.NET.

Note

To get the full sample projects, please refer to Samples section.

Imports EASendMail 'Add EASendMail namespace

Module Module1

    Sub Main()

        Try
            Dim oMail As New SmtpMail("TryIt")

            ' Set sender email address, please change it to yours
            oMail.From = "test@emailarchitect.net"
            ' Set recipient email address, please change it to yours
            oMail.To = "support@emailarchitect.net"

            ' Set email subject
            oMail.Subject = "test HTML email from VB.NET project"
            ' Set HTML body
            oMail.HtmlBody = "<font size=5>This is</font> <font color=red><b>a test</b></font>"

            ' Your SMTP server address
            Dim oServer As New SmtpServer("smtp.emailarchitect.net")

            ' User and password for ESMTP authentication
            oServer.User = "test@emailarchitect.net"
            oServer.Password = "testpassword"

            ' Most mordern SMTP servers require SSL/TLS connection now.
            ' ConnectTryTLS means if server supports SSL/TLS, SSL/TLS will be used automatically.
            oServer.ConnectType = SmtpConnectType.ConnectTryTLS

            ' If your SMTP server uses 587 port
            ' oServer.Port = 587

            ' If your SMTP server requires SSL/TLS connection on 25/587/465 port
            ' oServer.Port = 25 ' 25 or 587 or 465
            ' oServer.ConnectType = SmtpConnectType.ConnectSSLAuto

            Console.WriteLine("start to send HTML email ...")

            Dim oSmtp As New SmtpClient()
            oSmtp.SendMail(oServer, oMail)

            Console.WriteLine("email was sent successfully!")
        Catch ep As Exception
            Console.WriteLine("failed to send email with the following error:")
            Console.WriteLine(ep.Message)
        End Try

    End Sub
End Module

After you received the email by your email client, the body text is like this:

VB.NET html email sample

Import Html to email directly

Of course, you don’t have to write the HTML source body text in your application manually. You can build a html file with HTML tools and use ImportHtmlBody method to import the html file directly.

You can also refer to the htmlmail.* samples in EASendMail Installer. Those samples demonstrate how to build a HTML email editor and send HTML email with attachment or embedded images/pictures.

VB.NET html editor

Next Section

At next section I will introduce how to attach file attachment to email message in VB.

Appendix

Comments

If you have any comments or questions about above example codes, please click here to add your comments.