(VB.NET) Getting TO / CC Email Recipients

Demonstrates how to examine the TO and CC recipients of an email.

Note: BCC recipients are generally NOT found in the email's MIME. "BCC" is a "Blind Carbon Copy", which means that the TO and CC recipients of the email should not be able to see the BCC recipients. If the BCC email addresses were found in the MIME header, then they would no longer be "blind" because nothing would prevent the other recipients from seeing the list of BCC recipients.

To understand how BCC recipients receive an email, I recommend reading this blog post: SMTP Protocol in a Nutshell. The BCC recipients are passed to the SMTP server in “RCPT TO” commands.

Download: Chilkat .NET Assemblies

'  An email can have any number of To, CC, or Bcc recipients.
Dim email As New Chilkat.Email()

Dim success As Boolean

success = email.LoadEml("sample.eml")
If (success <> true) Then
    TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & email.LastErrorText & vbCrLf
    Exit Sub
End If


'  It doesn't matter if the email object was loaded from a .eml file,
'  or if it was downloaded from a POP3 or IMAP server.
'  The methods and properties for examining the TO and CC
'  recipients are the same.
Dim i As Long

'  The number of TO recipients is found in the NumTo property
Dim numTo As Long
numTo = email.NumTo

'  Iterate over each TO recipient
If (numTo > 0) Then
    For i = 0 To numTo - 1
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "TO Friendly Name and Address: " _
             & email.GetTo(i) & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "TO Address: " _
             & email.GetToAddr(i) & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "TO Friendly Name: " _
             & email.GetToName(i) & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "---" & vbCrLf
    Next
End If


'  The number of CC recipients is found in the NumCC property
Dim numCC As Long
numCC = email.NumCC

'  Iterate over each CC recipient
If (numCC > 0) Then
    For i = 0 To numCC - 1
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "CC Friendly Name and Address: " _
             & email.GetCC(i) & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "CC Address: " _
             & email.GetCcAddr(i) & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "CC Friendly Name: " _
             & email.GetCcName(i) & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "---" & vbCrLf
    Next
End If