Resolved sending outlook mail with graphics

Hi everybody,

Found the Openedge-Knowledgebase-article Progress KB - How to add graphical or HTML content to the email body using Outlook COM object - How to add graphical or HTML content to the email body using Outlook COM object.

It works partly. The outlook mail shows the picture, when I send it e.g. to my gmail-address, the picture is gone. Not a gmail-problem, same happens when the recipient uses Outlook as well. See attatched screenshot.


Google search finds a lot of "answers" to "outlook email graphics not displayed", tried all of them, none worked.
I guess the problem is that the images are not really "embedded", but only "linked".

Does anybody have a solution for this ?

TIA, Wolf
Mails.jpeg
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Don't know about Outlook, but this sounds exactly like what happens for me with sending in plain text vs sending in HTML.
 

TomBascom

Curmudgeon
I mean "take an action that results in a message being transmitted to an inbox".

You generally send email by creating a message that follows RFC 822 (and its successor 5322) and then invoking an SMTP interface. SMTP is the Simple Mail Transport Protocol described by RFC 5321. If you insist on using Microsoft stuff, Exchange servers understand SMTP.



There are many good ways to send email. None of them involve invoking Outlook. Personally, I generally invoke the Linux "mailx" command. Many other people in the Progress community have used a tool called smtpmail.p.

The email itself should not depend on Outlook in any way. If it does then you are locking yourself, and all potential recipients, into Microsoft's software. And when you send one of your emails to people with bad attitudes we won't be able to read it because it will have been transformed into a garbled and utterly useless attachment known as "winmail.dat". Even if you don't send it to people like me on purpose somebody will eventually forward it. And it will then become an interoperability problem.
 

Cringer

ProgressTalk.com Moderator
Staff member
Also, using the COM Object for anything new is a bad idea IMO. It's slow, clunky, and reliant on Microsoft keeping the functionality the same across versions (which is not guaranteed!).
 
I agree totally, nobody knows what Microsoft will support in the future.
BUT: right now all our customers are using Microsoft Office as their business solution, an they insist in using outlook. They also want all their wmails in their Sent-folders, even if the mails are sent from our software. So I'm somehow stuck with Outlook.....
 

Cringer

ProgressTalk.com Moderator
Staff member
I've not researched more than just a quick Google, but it looks like you can use .Net to send emails through Outlook. My feeling is, this would be more robust and future proof than COM.
 
Hi everybody,

Found the Openedge-Knowledgebase-article Progress KB - How to add graphical or HTML content to the email body using Outlook COM object - How to add graphical or HTML content to the email body using Outlook COM object.

It works partly. The outlook mail shows the picture, when I send it e.g. to my gmail-address, the picture is gone. Not a gmail-problem, same happens when the recipient uses Outlook as well. See attatched screenshot.


Google search finds a lot of "answers" to "outlook email graphics not displayed", tried all of them, none worked.
I guess the problem is that the images are not really "embedded", but only "linked".

Does anybody have a solution for this ?

TIA, Wolf
View attachment 2186
The image src that you are using is local (C:\image.jpg)? Do you tried with an Internet visible http://xxxx.xxxx/image.jpg image?
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
It seems to me that you have three distinct potential problems:
1. Composing a valid e-mail containing the desired image, regardless of how sent.
2. Interfacing with Outlook to make that e-mail appear to have been *sent* from the Outlook client.
3. Potentially dealing with any issues specific to that interface and your message contents.
That seem right to you?

Personally, I find issue #2 bizarre. Sending it to the client as a copy to document the transmission, sure, but making it appear as if sent from the client seems very peculiar. Waving said so, I am going to ignore that further.

Given the complexities of having three different issues, I would start by using a proven technology to compose and send the mail via SMTP and work with that until you are getting the results you want. Only then, would I proceed to try the interface with Outlook since you will start out knowing that you have a valid mail body.
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Perhaps if you attached an example of one of the e-mails someone knowledgeable about e-mails would be able to point at what was wrong.
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
I meant your current effort and the actual HTML code so that we can see what you have constructed.
 

TomBascom

Curmudgeon
Support for some things may vary with the version of Progress that you are using. Especially if you have something that is ancient, obsolete and unsupported. You don't seem to have mentioned what version of Progress you are using anywhere in this thread but your initial thoughts around COM objects make me suspicious that we are talking about something really old and primitive.

Having said that - wanting to embed images probably means that you need to explore creating MIME formatted emails.
 
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