ASPMail 3.x Documentation

AspMail allows you to send mail using the standard SMTP protocol from any program that can use ActiveX/OLE components. Features include:

Changes in AspMail 3.0

AspMail Installation

To use this ASP component move the DLL into a subdirectory (like \winnt\system32 for NT or \windows\system for Win95). Please use the version of regsvr32 that is included with this component or the version that comes with Microsoft ASP (they are the same version).

To register the component on the system change to the directory where you installed the DLL and type:

Make sure your TMP or TEMP envinronment variable is set up as a system variable if you are running WinNT. You can use our troubleshooting utility for a simple way to configure this, or if you want to do it manually, you can follow these instructions:

Simple Mail Example

The following code demonstrates how to use AspMail from VBScript. In this example Joe from Joe’s Widgets wishes to send an email to John Smith. Joe’s mail server is located at mailhost.localisp.net.

By testing the result of the SendMail method we can determine if the mailing process was successful or not.

Form Handling

All or partial input for a message may come from a form. For example, a form posted to the server with a request method of GET (i.e. <form action="/scripts/AspMail.asp" method=get>) may provide the message recipient’s email address, subject and message text as follows:

The form may also use the POST method (i.e. <form action="/scripts/AspMail.asp" method=post>) in which case the code would look as follows:

You can use any mixture of static and dynamic data in setting the components properties as dictated by your needs. For example, you may wish to send the mail to a single user. In this case you could modify the code to look something like this:

Generic Form Handling

In some cases users may wish to use a number of different forms to send email with the same block of code. ASP allows you to loop through each QueryString or Form variable and append each one to string variable which is then assigned to the BodyText property. Please note: AspMail cannot control the order that these variables are returned in. This is a function of ASP, not AspMail. ASP takes the form variables and creates the appropriate Request collection (QueryString or Form) and stores the data in an order that AspMail cannot change. If you use this method you must accept ASP's order.

Setting Mail Priority

The Priority property sets the message priority on a scale of 1 to 5. A priority of 1 means HIGH. A priority of 3 means NORMAL and a priority of 5 means LOW. In addition to this you can also set the Urgent property if the message status is urgent. The Urgent property is a true/false property.

How to Use the DateTime Property

The component creates a Date/Time value for the message based on the calculated GMT time. The DateTime property was added to allow users to set a custom date/time timezone. The following code demonstrates how to set the DateTime to US Central Standard Time. By slightly altering the code you can adjust this to work for your own timezone.

Notes About Creating the Mailer Object

You will have to decide when and where it is appropriate to create the object based on your particular application. If you aren't sure which way to create the object reference, or for typical usage, you should create the object immediately before sending your email. Your code would look like this:

Creating these local references, as demonstrated above, allow you to use the object on multiple application threads at the same time.

To create an object reference at the session level, your code might look something like this:

Multiple Host Support

AspMail provides one host property to set up remote SMTP server addresses. The RemoteHost property should be set to your primary and secondary server’s address seperated by semicolons. In the event that the primary server is down, AspMail will attempt to use the secondary server. For example,

PGP Support

AspMail now supports PGP. See the pgpmail.asp script for an example of usage. ServerObjects Inc. is not responsible for PGP support. If you have questions about PGP please contact the developers of PGP.

About purchasing AspMail

About Upgrades

Upgrade Instructions

Questions about AspMail

How do I determine a cause of mail failure?	Note about FromAddress: You must specify a value for the FromAddress property. Mail failure will occur without a FromAddress. If the component can determine why the SendMail method failed, that information will be stored in the Response property. So, for example, to print that information to the clients browser you could add the following code: if not Mailer.SendMail then if Mailer.Response <> ''" then strError = Mailer.Response else strError = "Unknown" end if Response.Write "Mail failure occured. Reason: " & strError end if Another fairly common problem is when a user reports that a specific feature is not working. For example BCC's may seem to never reach their destination. A valuable debugging tool is available with the SMTPLog feature. Assign a valid filename to this property and the contents of the SMTP transaction that occurs during a SendMail call will be recorded to this file. If you find that the SMTP transaction occurs without error then you should check elsewhere for the cause of mail delivery failure. Invariably the user finds that the BCC address was invalid or that the address was misconfigured. The SMTPLog feature allows you to verify if the transactions are complete and valid before pursuing other avenues in determining the cause of failure.
Checking the Mailer.Response property returns "File Access Denied" or "Cannot create file" or "I have a TMP/TEMP var but it still isn't working" What's wrong?	You probably don't have a TMP or TEMP path set up, or if you do, the IIS User (or any users authenticating under IIS) don't have read/write access to the this directory. Make sure the directory exists. Make sure the TMP or TEMP variable exists in your NT/Win95 environment. Under NT this must be a system environment variable, not a user environment variable. If TShoot (see our tech support page) doesn't show the var it isn't a system var. It must be a system var. Make sure all users which need access to the component (the anonymous IIS user and any other users which authenticate under IIS) have read/write access to this path. How to determine where your TMP/TEMP dir points to AspMail versions 2.5.8 and higher have a method called GetTempPath. To display where your TMP path is set to place the following code in an ASP script and run it. Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("SMTPsvg.Mailer") Response.Write Mailer.GetTempPath Your Win32 OS is designed to find your temporary path in the following manner: Check for TMP. If it does not exist, check for TEMP. If it does not exist use the current directory. ASP tends to use the \WinNT directory in this case.
What would cause an "Operation timed out error"? or "AspMail has been working great but suddenly I'm getting an 'Operation timed out' error.	Reasons for operation timed out include: SMTP server is down, overloaded or simply not responding Firewall blocking port 25 between AspMail and SMTP server Packet filtering blocking port 25 between AspMail and SMTP server IP route is down Your Winsock configured DNS server is down To check using another method run telnet [smtp hostname] 25 from the IIS server where AspMail is installed. If telnet can see the SMTP server, then AspMail can see the server also.
I'm adding attachments but they aren't getting added to the actual mailing. What's wrong?	The path specified is not valid. The user the component is running under, typically the anonymous IIS user, does not have rights to open the file. The anon IIS user, by default, cannot read from networked drives so a path such as \\foobar\files\myfile.zip is not valid. The file is open by another process that's denying reads to the file.
Is there a comprehensive list of errors that can be returned by AspMail?	There are quite a few errors that can be returned. We do not have a comprehensive list, primarily because these errors are returned from systems AspMail is dependent on. The errors can come from your SMTP server (errors vary from vendor to vendor), from WinSock errors (documented by Microsoft) and general OS errors such as out of memory, disk read/write failures etc... (again documented by Microsoft).
"AddCC or AddBCC doesn't work" - is this a bug with AspMail? or "I'm adding multiple recipients but only the first one is getting delivered. What's wrong with AspMail?"	AddRecipient, AddCC and AddBCC work just as they should. The problem is not with AspMail. It is likely that your SMTP server is rejecting "foreign addresses" (see "no relay" question below). To test whether AspMail is functioning properly use the SMTPLog property to capture an SMTP session with multiple recipients. All the recipients you send to should appear in the log as the SMTP envelope is sent. If they all appear then the problem is with your SMTP server or an SMTP server down the stream (or your addresses are invalid).
The syntax Mailer.AddRecipient = "name", "name@address.net" and Mailer.AddRecipient = "name@address.net" both return a VBScript error. What's wrong?	First off, remove the = sign. AddRecipient sounds like and is actually a method, not a property. Also AddRecipient takes two parameters. See AddRecipient in the methods listing for details.
What's the syntax for adding multiple recipients?	Call AddRecipient, AddCC or AddBCC for each recipient. There's no other way to add multiple recipients. Mailer.AddRecipient "name1", "address1" Mailer.AddRecipient "name2", "address2" Mailer.AddBCC "name3", "address3"
How do I define the sensitivity of the message?	Outlook allows you to define a message sensitivity. You can do this using as mail by adding the sensitivity header along with the proper text for the sensitivity header. For example: Mailer.AddExtraHeader "Sensitivity: Company-Confidential"
How do I create a hyperlink in my message?	Set Mailer.ContentType = "text/html" and include the hyperlink just like you would with html. <html> <head><title>AspMail HyperLink</title><head> <body> <H3>AspMail HyperLink</H3> <% Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("SMTPsvg.Mailer") Mailer.FromName = "Status Update Report" Mailer.FromAddress = "useyour@isphostnamehere.com" Mailer.RemoteHost = "your.smtp.server" Mailer.AddRecipient "Your Recipient", "yourrecipients@addressgoeshere.com" Mailer.Subject = "AspMail Hyperlink" Mailer.ContentType = "text/html" Mailer.BodyText = "<html><body>Here's some <a href=""http://www.serverobjects.com/"">info</a></body></html>" if Mailer.SendMail then Response.Write "Mail sent..." else Response.Write "Mail failure. Check mail host server name and tcp/ip connection..." Response.Write "<p>" & Mailer.Response end if %>
How do I create a line-break in a message?	Under VBScript you can use the predefined constant VbCrLf. Simply using a Chr(13) or a Chr(10) will not work --you must use both -- the VBCrLf defined constant is the preferred method. A Carriage-return and line-feed character are required to create a new line in the message. See the sample scripts for examples.
"Do I need to install SMTP on my server?"	AspMail "knows" how to talk SMTP without any external dependencies. You do not need to have Exchange or other products installed (outside of the OS) for AspMail to work.
How do I set the username and password to send mail?	Standard SMTP does not use a uid/pwd so it isn't needed. The protocol used to retrieve mail, POP3 typically requires a uid/pwd but AspMail doesn't use POP3 since it is a send mail component.
What versions of PGP does AspMail support?	AspMail can support any encryption program that uses command-line parameters. Using PGPPath and PGPParams you can specify input, output and processing options. The current version of PGP (5.0) does not support command-line parameters but the commercial PGP 4.x does as well as the freeware (non-commercial use) PGP 2.6.2.
How do I troubleshoot PGP usage?	Check permissions on the pgp.exe. The anon IIS user (if you are calling PGP from that user account) will need rights to read and execute files from the PGP directory. Verify the path and params you are setting up to call PGP. Use task manager to see if PGP is getting executed on the server. Check the Mailer.Response property immediately after you call GetBodyTextFromFile to see if any O/S errors are getting returned by the call to PGP. If the error returned in the Response property indicates that file access was denied, or that there was a file access timeout you need to find out... If the file is getting created in the path specified. What has the file open. You can use Filemon for Windows NT and HandleEx from Systems Internals to help debug these issues.
My mail to AOL is bouncing. What am I doing wrong?	AOL will not accept anything other than a true address in the "From:" heading. Just about every mail system out there, except AOL and Compuserve, will accept the "No Mail Address" as the "From:" header. (thanks to R.S for this info).
I want to use AspMail from VB, FoxPro or [insert name here].	The product page has several examples of usage from other languages. Be sure you are using AspMail 3.x since this version corrects a problem some users reported with previous versions.
Does AspMail support 8bit messages? or "does AspMail support Japanese character set"	AspMail supports any 8 bit characters but please note: Message bodies may be 8bit. Some SMTP servers drop the 8th bit in message headers including Subject lines. You can encode message subjects using a new method named EncodeHeader. See the methods listing for details. Some character sets don't work properly using this method, some do. We don't have any support for character sets that don't work properly using this encoding.
Can I repeatedly assign values to the BodyText property? and "The message text keeps growing with each email I send."	Yes, the text will be appended to the message. Use ClearBodyText if you need to clear the message text.
Can AspMail be used to retrieve files off the client computer?	AspMail is a server-side component. Retrieving files from the client computer requires a client-side component that has access to the client's local harddisk or a browser that supports file uploads in addition to a server side component/extension that can accept those files. AspMail does not support this function.
How do I get Exchange to route Internet email to the Net?	Exchange uses a service called the Internet Mail Connector (IMC) to allow it to act as an SMTP server and transmit and receive mail via a TCP/IP network. If you are not running the IMC you will not be able to send or receive mail from the Internet by AspMail or any other means. Once you have SMTP mail going with the IMC, no further action should be necessary to use AspMail. (Thanks to Steve Crane for this information). Note: You must enable the rerouting on your Exchange's Internet Mail Connector. Go in the properties of your Internet Mail Services (Exchange 5.0). Check the reroute incoming SMTP mail option and add a route to your domain. Mail sent to "yourdomain.com" should be accepted as "inbound". Thanks to Sébastien STORMACQ for this information.
How do I upgrade to the latest version?	Download the latest "eval" version and follow the upgrade directions provided earlier in this document.
Can I redistribute this control with my products?	The license agreement does not permit redistribution of AspMail.
The SMTP server is reporting back a "no relay" error. What's wrong?	The SMTP server is looking at your FromAddress and determining that it doesn't know who you are. Some SMTP servers are configured to disallow the "relaying" or transfer of mail originating from addresses outside of its own domain. The only solution is to provide a FromAddress that's local to the SMTP server's domain or get the operator of the SMTP server to allow the FromAddress you are using. This setting is commonly used by ISP's to prevent spammers from using their resources.
Some of our emails are getting equal signs at the end of lines in some messages. Why?	AspMail can encode high characters using a scheme where the = sign indicates a character to be decoded follow by the hex string value of the character to be encoded. This system of course assumes that the client can decode these characters (which most can). This is called quoted-printable encoding. The default for AspMail is not to use QP encoding. Things that trigger automatic QP encoding: High characters - characters with the following ordinal values 0..31,61,128..255 Long lines of a message body (you can turn wordwrap on to fix this case) Most clients are capable of handling QP encoding. If your client is not capable then you should upgrade your client or you must work within the above limitations to prevent the QP encoding from occuring.
Sometimes I get multiple messages sent when I call SendMail. Why?	AspMail has an internal routine to look for errors. If an error occurs at any point (even after the text of the message has been sent to the SMTP server) AspMail will go ahead and attempt to send it a second time in an attempt to complete the SMTP transaction without any errors. The only way to find out what the error is would be to check the Response property and log that to some sort of file (make sure you're multi-user safe in doing this to prevent another problem). The AspMail routine will only attempt 1 retry.
My component is registered. Should the Expires property return a date?	No. Registered versions return N/A for an expiration date. The registration process (per the instructions you received) should be run on the server.
I'm mailing a large number of people. At some point in the mailing it fails. Can you give me any tips?	The first tip is to use the SMTPLog property to write an SMTP log to disk and see what the point of failure is based on the log. The SMTP server is probably rejecting your message for some reason and the cause is typically determinable from the log. Secondly, some SMTP servers only accept mail for locally known recipients. The SMTP server may be rejecting your message since it is being addressed to recipients outside the domain of that SMTP server. This is unusual but could possibly be the problem you are running into.
Using the SMTPLog property I got an error #132. How can I look up numeric errors returned by AspMail to find out what it means?	TShoot under the file menu has a Win32 error code lookup form.
What are some of the issues that affect the speed of the mailing?	A small message should take 3-4 seconds to send if the server is local and all other conditions are normal. The following list are some items that can affect transfer speed. The slower the TCP connection the longer the mailing will take. Typically a local server is much faster than a remote server. If you are losing packets between your server and the SMTP server you can expect longer times due to this packet loss. The size of the mailing. The larger the message the longer the message transfer will take to send. CPU utilization: If your CPU is experiencing heavy usage you can expect it to take longer to transfer mail. SMTP server utilization: If your SMTP server is experiencing heavy traffic response times from the server are going to take longer thus increasing the time it takes to send a message. One thing we've found is that by changing the RemoteHost name from a hostname to an IP address can cut 3 or 4 seconds off some messages. Even if the RemoteHost name is set to the local server's name, we've found some messages waiting for the hostname lookup. Just change the address to an IP and you may see an increase in the speed.
Is there a limit to the length of email addresses.	AspMail support longer email addresses than anyone has so there are no practical limits. If your email is not being delivered see the previous questions for pointers on how to troubleshoot mail failures.
Does the 2 CPU license cover two servers or two processors?	In accordance with the license agreement, the 2 CPU license would cover either 2 single CPU servers or 1 dual CPU server. With this pricing model, AspMail is far more inexpensive than any "competing" products.

Property	Description
BodyText	The message body text. To clear the text once you have set it use the ClearBodyText Method. Example: Mailer.BodyText = "Your order for 15 widgets has been processed"
CharSet	The character set. By default the char set is US Ascii Valid values: 1 = US Ascii 2 = ISO-8859-1 Example: Mailer.CharSet = 2
ConfirmRead	The ConfirmReading flag. If this is set to true AND the recipients email program supports this feature (and it is enabled) the recipients email program will send a notice back to the FromAddress confirming that this email has been read. Example: Mailer.ConfirmRead = true
ContentType	The ContentType property allows you to set the ContentType header of the message's BodyText. If, for example, you wanted to send HTML as the messages's body, you could set ContentType = "text/html" and EMail programs that support HTML content could properly display the HTML text. Note: The ContentType property is ignored if you have file attachments. Example: Mailer.ContentType = "text/html"
CustomCharSet	If you wish to use a character set besides the included types you can set CustomCharSet to a character set string. Example: Mailer.CustomCharSet = "ISO-2022" or Mailer.CustomCharSet = "big5"
DateTime	AspMail will, by default, create a Date/Time header for your local system using GMT. If you would like to override the date/time calculation set the DateTime property to a valid date/time string in the format defined by RFC 822 & RFC 1123. Example: Mailer.DateTime = "Fri, 02 May 1997 10:53:49 -0500"
Encoding	The encoding type for attachments. The default setting is MIME. Valid values: 1 = UUEncoded 2 = MIME Example: Mailer.Encoding = 1
Expires	If the component is an eval version the expires property will return the date that the component quits functioning. Example: Response.Write "Component Expires: " & Mailer.Expires
FromName	The message originator’s name. Example: Mailer.FromName = "Joe’s Widget Shop"
FromAddress	The message originator’s email address. Example: Mailer.FromAddress = "joe@widgets.com"
IgnoreMalformedAddress	Defaults to false. When false AspMail will check for '@' in the email address for calls to AddRecipient, AddCC and AddBCC. An error would be returned in the Response property. When this property is set to true AspMail will not perform any address syntax validation. If you are using AspMail to send a message through an SMS gateway or fax system you may need to set this property to true.
IgnoreRecipientErrors	Defaults to true. If true AspMail will ignore error messages returned by the SMTP server for invalid addresses. This is useful when a mailing is addressed to a number of recipients.
Live	Live allows you to test the component without an SMTP server. If Live is set to false then the NET SEND message will be executed with the FromName property being used as the recipient of the message. Only the subject is sent to the recipient. Example: Mailer.FromName = "ASPProgrammer" Mailer.Live = false
Organization	Sets the Organization header in the message. Example: Mailer.Organization = "Your Company Name"
PGPPath	The path where PGP is located.
PGPParams	Parameters that PGP will use to process message.
Priority	Sets the message priority. Priorities are 1-5 and are reflected in the X-Priority Valid values: 1 – High 3 – Normal 5 – Low Example: Mailer.Priority = 1
RemoteHost	The remote SMTP host that the message will be sent through. This is typically an SMTP server located at your local ISP or it could be an internal SMTP server on your companies premises. Up to 3 server addresses can be specified, seperated by a semicolon. If the primary server is down the component will attempt to send the mail using the seconary server and so on. Example: Mailer.RemoteHost = "mailhost.myisp.net" or Mailer.RemoteHost = "mailhost.myisp.net; mailhost.myotherisp.net"
ReplyTo	The ReplyTo property allows you to specify a different email address that replies should be sent to. By default mail programs should use the Reply-To: header for responses if this header is specified.
Response	The Response property returns any error messages that may occur.
ReturnReceipt	The ReturnReceipt flag. If this is set to true AND the recipients SMTP server supports this feature (and it is enabled) the recipients SMTP server will send a notice back to the FromAddress confirming that this email has been delivered. Example: Mailer.ReturnReceipt = false
SMTPLog	If you need to debug the session give a log file name here. Make sure the IUSR_XYZ IIS user has security that allows the component to write to this file. Warning: Do not use this setting in situations where multiple users can access this component at the same time. This is for single user debugging ONLY! Example: Mailer.SMTPLog = "c:\smtplog.txt"
Subject	The message subject. Example: Mailer.Subject = "Stock split announced!"
SuppressMsgBody	The SuppressMsgBody property is true by default and is used in conjuction with the SMTPLog property. When SMTPLog is set to a file and SuppressMsgBody is true the log file receives a copy of the message text. If SuppressMsgBody is false the message text is not sent to the log.
TimeOut	Timeout is the maximum time that AspMail should wait for a response from the remote server. The default is 30 seconds. Example: Mailer.Timeout = 15
Urgent	The urgent flag sets the X-Urgent header in the outgoing message. Not all mail readers support this flag. Example: Mailer.Urgent = true
UseMSMailHeaders	MS-Mail priority headers, by default, are sent in addition to the standard SMTP priority headers. You can turn MS-Mail headers off with this property Example: Mailer.UseMSMailHeaders = false
Version	Gets the internal component version number. Example: Response.Write "Component Version: " & Mailer.Version
WordWrap	The WordWrap property is off by default. Setting WordWrap to true causes the message body to wordwrap at the position specified by the WordWrapLen property.
WordWrapLen	The WordWrapLen property is set to 70 by default. You can modify the position that wordwrap occurs by changing this value.

Method	Parameters	Return Value	Description
SendMail	None	True or False Example: if Mailer.SendMail then Response.Write "Mail sent..." else Response.Write "Mail failure. Check mail host server name and tcp/ip connection..." end if	The SendMail method attempts to send the email.
AddRecipient	Mailer.AddRecipient "Jay Jones", "jayj@somehost.net"	True/False based upon success or failure.	Adds a new recipient, as shown in the message's To: list.
ClearRecipients	None	None	Clears any recipients assigned to the To list.
AddCC	Mailer.AddCC "Jay Jones", "jayj@somehost.net"	True/False based upon success or failure.	Adds a new recipient, as shown in the message's CC list.
ClearCCs	None	None	Clears any recipients assigned to the CC list.
AddBCC	Mailer.AddBCC "Jay Jones", "jayj@somehost.net"	True/False based upon success or failure.	Adds a new Blind Carbon Copy recipient. BCC recipients are not shown in any message recipient list.
ClearBCCs	None	None	Clears any recipients assigned to the BCC list.
ClearAllRecipients	None	None	Clears all recipients assigned to the To, CC and BCC lists.
AddAttachment	Filename to attach to message. Example: Mailer.AddAttachment "d:\shipping\proddsk1.zip"	N/A	Adds attachments to current mailing. You must use an explicit path to attach files. Make sure that the IUSR_XYZ IIS user, or the authenticated user has security rights that allow the component to read the necessary files! Note: Attachments may not supported in the eval version.
ClearAttachments	None	None	Clears any attachments that were previously set. Example: Mailer.ClearAttachments
ClearBodyText	None	None	Clears any text assigned to the message’s body which may have been set previously by using the BodyText property.
ClearExtraHeaders	None	None	Clears any X-Headers that were set by use of AddExtraHeader.
AddExtraHeader	A string value that forms a proper SMTP X-Header Example: Mailer.AddExtraHeader ("X-HeaderName: XHdrValue")	True or false. Returns true if X-Header was added.	Adds extra X-Headers to the mail envelope.
GetBodyTextFromFile	See pgpmail.asp for more information.	See pgpmail.asp for more information.	Loads message's body text from a file. Optionally runs PGP on the message text. See pgpmail.asp for more information.
EncodeHeader	strValue	strValue encoded as String	Encodes a string in RFC1522 format to provide support for 8bit mail headers such as 8bit subject headers. Example: Mailer.Subject = Mailer.EncodeHeader("Résponse de Service à la clientèle")
GetTempPath	N/A	strPath	Returns the path set up by the OS for temporary mail files. See the discussion on TMP env variables for more information.

AspMail 3.x

About AspMail

Changes in AspMail 3.0

AspMail Installation