Simple-MAPI.NET

This project originated from the article Simple-MAPI-NET on CodeProject site. There has been a few important fixes in this project since the original was imported.

The nuget package

PM> Install-Package Simple-MAPI.NET

What does it do?

Simple MAPI.NET allows you to create an email message using the user's default email client on Windows.

You can set a subject, body and attachments and invoke the default email client (eg Outlook/Windows Mail), ready to send.

It's useful if you want to create an email for the user, without sending it yourself using SMTP etc.

Should I use

Simple MAPI is an old technology and it's basically deprecated - Microsoft warns that the use of Simple MAPI is discouraged and that it may be unavailable in later versions of Windows

But it's the only way, I know, to invoke the default Email client and set subject/body and attachments on Windows without using interops or anything Office-specific. Simple MAPI is just a set of functions and related data structures, in Windows, that this library calls.

It still works on Windows 10, with Outlook as the email client.

How to use

I have used it, with success, like this:

using Win32Mapi;

.
var mapi = new SimpleMapi();
mapi.AddRecipient(name: "[email protected]", addr: null, cc: false);
mapi.Attach(filepath: "c:\\bob.txt");
mapi.Send(subject: "a subject", noteText: "a body text");

I don't use Logon/off() because it used to cause issues (only in 64-bit Office/Outlook) and showed a superflous error but sent anyway - but I may need to revisit that choice.

History

I was using this source code within the ExceptionReporter.NET project.

I copied it, with internal attribution, from the article on Simple-MAPI-NET on the Code Project site. But I noticed that no one else had committed this code a to a repository... so, me to the rescue.

This way, I could use the library as a dependency rather than horde a load of unrelated code in the project - and get fixes and suggestions from the community!