Forwarding an Email

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This example discusses the CreateForward method and why it is too simplistic for forwarding email. A better solution using ChilkatMime is presented. Rather than using CreateForward, it creates a new message/rfc822 MIME message that contains the original email, and sends a new email with the original email message attached.

    Dim mailman As New ChilkatMailMan2
    mailman.UnlockComponent "anything for 30-day trial"
    
    ' The CreateForward is a convenience method for creating a new email for
    ' forwarding from an existing email.  It only works for plain-text emails.
    ' Let's begin the example and explain why...
    
    ' Create a simple email. (Normally we would get the email object by
    ' reading email from a POP3 server.)
    Dim email As New ChilkatEmail2
    email.From = "support@chilkatsoft.com"
    email.AddTo "Chilkat Software", "admin@chilkatsoft.com"
    email.Subject = "simple email"
    email.Body = "Body of simple email" & vbCrLf & "line 2 of the body..."
    
    Text1.Text = email.GetMime()
    ' Text1.Text now displays this:
'MIME-Version: 1.0
'Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 08:33:30 -0500
'Message-ID: <CHILKAT-MID-cf2afec9-e98e-484e-94a1-15e13ddffa9a@dotnet>
'X-Mailer: Chilkat Software Inc (http://www.chilkatsoft.com)
'X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
'From: support@ chilkatsoft.com
'return-path: support@chilkatsoft.com
'To: "Chilkat Software" <admin@chilkatsoft.com>
'subject: simple email
'Content-Type: text/plain
'Content -Transfer - encoding: quoted -printable
'
'Body of simple email
'line 2 of the body...
    
    Dim forward As ChilkatEmail2
    Set forward = email.CreateForward()
    
    Text2.Text = forward.GetMime()
    ' The forward email looks like this:
'return-path: support@chilkatsoft.com
'Content-Type: text/plain
'Content -Transfer - encoding: quoted -printable
'Subject: FW: simple email
'MIME-Version: 1.0
'Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 08:35:12 -0500
'Message-ID: <CHILKAT-MID-ce735a61-fc99-4789-9c47-fff5633b191d@dotnet>
'X-Mailer: Chilkat Software Inc (http://www.chilkatsoft.com)
'X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
'
'-----Original Message-----
'From: support@ chilkatsoft.com
'Sent: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 08:35:12 -0500
'To: "Chilkat Software" <admin@chilkatsoft.com>
'Subject: simple email
'
'Body of simple email
'line 2 of the body...
        
    ' The CreateForward method created a new email where the subject has
    ' a "FW:" prepended.  Also, the body contains the original email with
    ' the string "-----Original Message-----" followed by the critical
    ' header information and body of the original email.  The "To" header
    ' field has been removed from the forward email, because you will
    ' specify the "TO" recipient for it:
    forward.AddTo "Matt", "matt@chilkatsoft.com"
    
    ' The From address has also been removed.  You have to add yours to the
    ' forward email:
    forward.From = "admin@chilkatsoft.com"
    
    ' The CreateForward method is too simplistic for HTML email, or for emails
    ' containing multiple alternative bodies (i.e. plain-text and HTML)
    
    
    ' A more sophisticated solution is to use ChilkatMime to help:
    Dim mime As New ChilkatMime
    mime.UnlockComponent "anything for 30-day trial"
    
    ' The goal here is to attach the original email as a message/rfc822
    ' Get the original email as a MIME object.
    Dim originalEmailAsMimeObj As ChilkatMime
    Set originalEmailAsMimeObj = email.GetMimeObject()
    
    ' Create a new message/rfc822 MIME message, with a payload containing
    ' the original email.
    mime.NewMessageRfc822 originalEmailAsMimeObj
    
    ' Create a new email -- anything we want...
    Dim email2 As New ChilkatEmail2
    email2.Subject = "This is a forwarded email, see attached message"
    email2.AddTo "Matt", "matt@chilkatsoft.com"
    email2.From = "admin@chilkatsoft.com"
    email2.AddPlainTextAlternativeBody "This is the plain-text alternative body of the forwarded email"
    email2.AddHtmlAlternativeBody "<html><body><b>This is the HTML alternative of the forwarded email</b></body></html>"
    email2.AddStringAttachment "blahblah.txt", "This is an attachment from from an in-memory string"
    
    ' We'll want to attach the original email to this email, but we really need Chilkat Mime to do it...
    ' So first convert email2 to a MIME object.
    Dim email2Mime As ChilkatMime
    Set email2Mime = email2.GetMimeObject()
    
    ' The "mime" variable contains our message/rfc822 MIME with the original email.
    ' Append it as a new sub-part to email2Mime
    email2Mime.AppendPart mime
    
    ' Load it back into email2.
    email2.SetFromMimeText email2Mime.GetMime()
    
    ' Send this new email which contains the original as an attached message.
    mailman.SmtpHost = "smtp.comcast.net"
    success = mailman.SendEmail(email2)
    
    If (success = 0) Then
        MsgBox mailman.LastErrorText
    Else
        MsgBox "Mail Sent!"
    End If
    
    ' Save our email to a .eml file so we can examine the MIME structure if desired.
    email2.SaveEml "email2.eml"

Need a specific example? Send a request to support@chilkatsoft.com