I'm attempting to send HTML formatted emails using C# 3 via Outlook.MailItem
Outlook.MailItem objMail = (Outlook.MailItem)olkApp.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem);
objMail.To = to;
objMail.Subject = subject;
objMail.HTMLBody = htmlBody;
The email is generated externally by saving from an RTF control (TX Text Control), which yields HTML with links to images stored in a <<FileName>>_files subdirectory. Example:
<img border="0" src="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/ItsMe/Local%20Settings/Temp/2/zbt4dmvs_Images/zbt4dmvs_1.png" width="94" height="94" alt="[image]">
Sending the email this way generates a mail with broken links.
Using Outlook 2007 as the email client with Word as the email editor, switching to RTF (Options tab, Format tab group) preserves the layout and inlines the images.
Programmatically doing this via:
var oldFormat = objMail.BodyFormat;
objMail.BodyFormat = Outlook.OlBodyFormat.olFormatRichText;
objMail.BodyFormat = oldFormat;
loses the formatting and mangles the images (the image becomes a [image] link marker on screen which is clickable but no longer shows the image). This isn't a surprise given that the documentation for MailItem.BodyFormat Property says "All text formatting will be lost when the BodyFormat property is switched from RTF to HTML and vice-versa".
Sadly there doesnt seem to be an easy way to change the Type of each Attachment in the MailItem.Attachements to OlAttachmentType.olByValue, as it's a read-only property that's set when you create the Attachment.
An approach that comes to mind is to walk the HTML, replacing the <img> tags with markers and programatically walking the MailItem text, inserting an Outlook.Attachment of Type OlAttachmentType.olByValue.
Another option is to convert the <img> links to use src="cid:uniqueIdN" and add the images as attachments with the referenced identities.
So, to the question... Is there a way to get the linked images converted to embedded images, ideally without getting into third party tools like Redemption? Converting to RTF happens to yield the outcome, but doing it that way is by no means a pre-requisite, and obviously may lose fidelity - I Just Want It to Just Work :D Neither of my existing ideas sound Clean to me.
Since you are using .net > 2.0, you may want to look into the System.Net.Mail namespace for the creation of mail messages. I have found that its quite customizable and was very easy to use for a task similar to yours. The only problems that I had was making sure I was using the right encoding, and I had to use HTML tables for layouts (css would not work right). Here are some links to show you how this works...
Basic
With multiple views (Plain Text and HTML)
If that's not an option, then I would recommend going the Content ID route and embedding the images as attachments. Your other option is to host the images publicly on a website, and change the image links in the html to the public images.
Something that you should be cognizant about is that HTML emails can easily look like spam and can be treated as such by email servers and clients. Even ones that are just for in-house usage (its happened to me) can end up in Outlook's Junk Mail folder..
DOH!, actually sending the email in Outlook 2007 forces the images to become embedded.
The Sent Item size of 8K is a lot smaller than the draft size of 60K (RTF) I was seeing vs the draft size of 1K (HTML that hadn't been converted to RTF and back again).
So it was Doing What I Mean all the time. Grr.
I'll leave the Q and the A up here in case it helps someone of a similarly confused state of mind.
BTW some useful links I found on my journey:
Sending emails example
General Q&A site with other examples of varying quality
Related
I'm working on an assistant (written in VB.NET for Winforms) to help screening and distribution of incoming e-mails inside my organization, which is and will continue to be made by human employees (I just need to speed up their work). Program will convert each message to HTML document and its attachments to PDF and will store it in internal database. This part is already working.
I'm already using HtmlAgilityPack to handle inline images (src="cid:..."), but I'm worried about what can I do to prevent malicious content inside the message can be activated when showing it (in a .NET's WebBrowser control).
I thought of two things I could do, also with HtmlAgilityPack:
removal of every <script> element;
changing of every <a href="..."> attribute to "#"
Can anyone who is more experienced with this issue suggest additional steps I should take on this "cleansing" of each message's HTML?
Thank you very much!
As an extra layer of security you can:
check embedded URLs with an URL scanner. I suggest UrlVoid, they have an API too (pointless if you have already a proper virus scanner).
As suggested, you can remove all script and additional all style blocks:
Dim doc As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument = New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
doc.LoadHtml(html)
doc.DocumentNode.Descendants.Where(() => { }, ((n.Name = "script") _
OrElse (n.Name = "style"))).ToList.ForEach(() => { }, n.Remove)
parse out any unwanted attributes to elements you don't want to allow, like onclick() and other javascript events.
remove other unwanted tags: HTML Agility Pack strip tags NOT IN whitelist
Note: There are a lot of powerful PHP HTML sanitizer/purifier. You can play around with them to do some quick tests (or even use one to pre-process your content). Most often HTML Purifier is recommended.
Please bear with me; there's a long story coming up. It's about programatically creating HTML e-mails from Delphi-7, sending them to Outlook, and not showing the pictures in it, so if you don't know anything about that, don't bother reading it all.
I have an application that sends variable-text E-mails, from a Delphi-7 program, to Outlook. I'm using a TMailInfo item, use a template HTML file for layout, replace placeholders with data from the program (%NAME% becomes "Johnson" etc), create a new Outlook message and populate HTMLbody with my result. All of this works fine.
Recently my client sent me a new sample message, asking me if I could change this E-mail to the new layout as he sent me. So I saved the E-mail as html (from Outlook, generating a huge HTML file full of code that is hardly understandable for a non-HTML guru like me)), replaced the static data with my placeholders, and saved it as the new template.
This worked fine except for one thing - the new layout included some local pictures (not available from a public web resource). When original sample mail from outlook, two things were created - a htm file with the html code, named "Subject" AND a folder called "Subject_files", containing the picture files plus a filelist.xml and an mso file.
The generated HTML refers to the pictures as src="subject_files/image001.jpg"> etc.
When I send the HTML to Outlook, it obviously has no idea where the images are - but how do I tell him?
What I tried:
copying the "subject_files" folder to "My Documents"
hardcoding the links to the pictures in several formats (i.e.
src="C:/test/subject_files/image001.jpg",
src="C://test/subject_files/image001.jpg",
src="C:\test\subject_files\image001.jpg",
and the like
but both don't work... so my question is really, how do I tell Outlook where to look for image files when programatically creating an HTML message?
Thanks in advance!
Once you the email, the recipient does not have access to your computer, So the images won't show in the email. to send images in an email you can:
Use aboslute links
<img src="http://www.example.com/images/header.jpg">
Use embedded images
Convert your images to BASE64, you can find many web sites online to that like
https://www.base64-image.de/ then
<img src="data:image/jpg;base64,/*base64-generated-string*/" />
As mentioned by Remy, the images can be added as regular attachments. You will then need to set the PR_ATTACH_CONTENT_ID property (DASL name http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x3712001F) using Attachment.PropertyAccessor.SetProperty. The HTML body must use the matching value for the cid attribute - <img src="cid:xyz">, where "xyz" is the value of the PR_ATTACH_CONTENT_ID property.
I created a pdf template with open office draw. it has textboxes and I can set values with acrofield. But I can't import a html content to template.
I can convert html contents to pdf file; but for template, how can I do it?
My problem is with template; also my html content have to map on page, for example center of page.
Thanks
I am not quite sure if I understand your question, but it seems like you need some kind of template where you will enter your content.
My thinking goes to OpenXML as the best fit. But since it is rather complex you can save some time by using third party tools.
From my experience, Docentric gives you good value for the money. You can prepare a template in Word and then merge it with data from any source that can fit into .NET object. Your document can be converted to pdf or xps if required.
Templates are generated in MS Word (2007 or newer) using special Docentric Add-in for template generation. All MS Word formatting can be applied here. Placeholders for data are set where the data will appear at runtime.
The process is straight forward so even end users can design reports. Developers then focus on bringing data in from various sources (database, XML). Chech the product documentation for ideas how to use it.
I know similar questions have already been asked but the answer is almost always the same: you need to share the image on a server and link to it from within the email.
For my purpose I cannot do that.
The image needs to be personalized for each user I send an email to (so the email will be dynamically generated for each user and will not always be the same. I cannot share the image -- since it will change but also for avoiding disclosure of users' information).
Have you ever encountered this scenario? Should I go with attachments or base64 encoding of images? Thoughts/experiences?
The HTML body must refer to the images using the content id (cid): <img src="cid:xyz">, where xyz is the value of the attachment content id (Content-ID) MIME header.
If you are creating the message directly in the MIME format, make sure the attachment is added to the message and its Content-ID MIME header is properly set. If you are Outlook Object Model or MAPI, you must set the PR_ATTACH_CONTENT_ID property on the image.
Since HTML5 allows base64 encoded images inline, this might be the easiest way to go. Check the following source: http://www.bigfastblog.com/embed-base64-encoded-images-inline-in-html
You should consider that not all mail clients might support HTML5 and therefore attaching the image and referencing it in your code may be the harder but better choice. Unfortunately I have no experience with that.
Edit: This tutorial looks promising, but I have not tried it: http://www.phpeveryday.com/articles/PHP-Email-Using-Embedded-Images-in-HTML-Email-P113.html
I'm trying to use an html email signature that pulls the html from another site. So, imagine I have the html hosted at blahblah.com/blah.html, and blah.html is:
<html>
<body>
Jon Jones
jon#blahblah.com
</body>
</html
And then my html signature would be something like <embed src="blahblah.com/blah.html/> that way I can manipulate the signature without having to constantly change the actual signature in Outlook (which I use to check my email).
I can't figure out any html that will do what I'm trying to do. The embed tag that I posted above doesn't do the trick. What simple line of html can I use to say "display what you find at blahblah.com/blah.html"
I would venture a guess and say this isn't the best way to do this.
From a security standpoint, I wouldn't want to be viewing any email sent by you that also brings in somesite.com/signature.htm. Even if it did, it would invoke a "click to view linked elements in this email" banner, and hide it until I did so (but chances are I'm not clicking).
From a recipient stand point, some spam filters block emails with externally-linked content (your intended recipient may not even get your email, or (best-case) see it with [spam] in the subject line.)
If you want an easy up-keep, you could place the signature in your my documents/some other folder and link to it via outlook's settings, but that about the least intense method (while also not causing concerns or issues to anyone viewing your email.)
It looks like instructions for what you want are here: http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/tips/html-email.html
Under "How to add HTML links in Outlook HTML emails," point to blahblah.com/blah.html
On the other hand, HTML in emails is generally not a great thing because it often isn't very secure (you could send me a page with HTML that would load a virus), so many clients won't be able to recieve it or will flag it as spam.