First things first, some useful StackOverflow links:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9201239/send-e-mail-via-smtp-using-c-sharp
To demonstrate how this is done I first create a new Visual Studio project:
Some example code for sending an email via a Google email account (smtp.goolgle.com) – obviously replace this with email / credentials of your own…
I put the code within a try-catch block in order to capture any errors that may occur while attempting this.
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Mail;
namespace EmailSmtp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
try
{
// Credentials
var credentials = new NetworkCredential("someEmail@gmail.com", "somePassword");
// Mail message
var mail = new MailMessage()
{
From = new MailAddress("someEmail@gmail.com"),
Subject = "Test email.",
Body = "Test email body"
};
mail.To.Add(new MailAddress("someEmail@gmail.com"));
// Smtp client
var client = new SmtpClient()
{
Port = 587,
DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network,
UseDefaultCredentials = false,
Host = "smtp.gmail.com",
EnableSsl = true,
Credentials = credentials
};
// Send it...
client.Send(mail);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Error in sending email: " + ex.Message);
Console.ReadKey();
return;
}
Console.WriteLine("Email sccessfully sent");
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
On attempting to run the program, you might get an error similar to “Error in sending email: The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: 5.5.1 Authentication Required.”
If this is the case then navigate to your Google account and allow it to run less secure app (set to ON) – this is what I did for the purposes of demonstration, and you can always turn this back to OFF, given that there may be risks to doing this.
https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps
So that on attempting to send the email again, your Google account allows it:
And on inspecting my Google email account see that I receive the warning from Google that access to less secure apps has been turned ON, plus the email I sent to myself to test the program:
