Send Email using Hotmail/Live/Outlook/Office 365 in VB 6.0¶

Introduction¶

Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com SMTP server address is smtp.live.com. It requires explicit SSL (TLS) connection to do user authentication, and you should use your Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com email address as the user name for ESMTP authentication. For example: your email is liveid@hotmail.com, and then the user name should be liveid@hotmail.com.

[VB 6.0 - Send Email using Hotmail/Live/Outlook over Explicit SSL (TLS) on 25 or 587 Port - Example]¶

The following example codes demonstrate how to send email using Hotmail/Live/Outlook in VB6 over TLS 25 or 587 port.

Const ConnectNormal = 0
Const ConnectSSLAuto = 1
Const ConnectSTARTTLS = 2
Const ConnectDirectSSL = 3
Const ConnectTryTLS = 4

Private Sub Command1_Click()

    Dim oSmtp As New EASendMailObjLib.Mail
    oSmtp.LicenseCode = "TryIt"

    ' Set your Hotmail email address
    oSmtp.FromAddr = "liveid@hotmail.com"
    ' Add recipient email address
    oSmtp.AddRecipientEx "support@emailarchitect.net", 0

    ' Set email subject
    oSmtp.Subject = "test email from hotmail account"
    ' Set email body
    oSmtp.BodyText = "this is a test email sent from VB 6.0 project with hotmail"

    ' Hotmail SMTP server address
    oSmtp.ServerAddr = "smtp.live.com"

    ' Hotmail user authentication should use your
    ' Hotmail email address as the user name.
    oSmtp.UserName = "liveid@hotmail.com"
    oSmtp.Password = "yourpassword"

    ' Set port to 587, if you want to use 25 port, please change 587 to 25
    oSmtp.ServerPort = 587

    ' detect SSL/TLS connection automatically
    oSmtp.ConnectType = ConnectSSLAuto

    MsgBox "start to send email ..."
    If oSmtp.SendMail() = 0 Then
        MsgBox "email was sent successfully!"
    Else
        MsgBox "failed to send email with the following error:" & oSmtp.GetLastErrDescription()
    End If

End Sub

Hotmail SMTP OAUTH¶

If your account enabled two-factor authentication, you cannot login your account by normal user authentication, you should use SMTP OAUTH or App Password.

Microsoft Live SMTP servers (Hotmail, Oultook personal account) have been extended to support authorization via the industry-standard OAuth 2.0 protocol. Using OAUTH protocol, user can do authentication by Microsoft Web OAuth instead of inputting user and password directly in application.

Microsoft will disable traditional user authentication in the future, switching to Microsoft OAuth (Modern Authentication) is strongly recommended now.

• Send Email from Hotmail/Outlook/Live using User Interaction OAuth

Or you can generate App Passwords and use this app password instead of your user password.

Send Email using Office 365¶

First of all, you should go to Office 365 “Outlook” -> “Options” -> “See All Options” -> “Account” -> “My Account” -> “Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access”. You will get your Office 365 SMTP server address and port. Then you can use your Office 365 SMTP server, port, user/password in the codes.

By default, Office 365 SMTP server uses 587 port and explicit SSL (TLS) connection.

[VB 6.0 - Send email using Office 365 over explicit SSL (TLS) on 587 port - Example]¶

The following example codes demonstrate how to send email using Office 365 in VB6 over TLS 587 port.

Const ConnectNormal = 0
Const ConnectSSLAuto = 1
Const ConnectSTARTTLS = 2
Const ConnectDirectSSL = 3
Const ConnectTryTLS = 4

Private Sub Command1_Click()

    Dim oSmtp As New EASendMailObjLib.Mail
    oSmtp.LicenseCode = "TryIt"

    ' Your office 365 email address
    oSmtp.FromAddr = "myid@mydomain"
    ' Add recipient email address
    oSmtp.AddRecipientEx "support@emailarchitect.net", 0

    ' Set email subject
    oSmtp.Subject = "test email from office 365 account"
    ' Set email body
    oSmtp.BodyText = "this is a test email sent from VB 6.0 project using office 365"

    ' Your Office 365 SMTP server address,
    ' You should get it from outlook web access.
    oSmtp.ServerAddr = "smtp.office365.com"

    ' user authentication should use your
    ' email address as the user name.
    oSmtp.UserName = "myid@mydomain"
    oSmtp.Password = "yourpassword"

    ' Set port to 587
    oSmtp.ServerPort = 587

    ' detect SSL/TLS connection automatically
    oSmtp.ConnectType = ConnectSSLAuto

    MsgBox "start to send email ..."
    If oSmtp.SendMail() = 0 Then
        MsgBox "email was sent successfully!"
    Else
        MsgBox "failed to send email with the following error:" & oSmtp.GetLastErrDescription()
    End If

End Sub

Office365 SMTP/EWS/Ms Graph API OAUTH¶

If your account enabled two-factor authentication, you cannot login your account by normal user authentication, you should use SMTP/EWS/Ms Graph API OAUTH or App Password.

Microsoft Office365 SMTP/EWS/Ms Graph API servers have been extended to support authorization via the industry-standard OAuth 2.0 protocol. Using OAUTH protocol, user can do authentication by Microsoft Web OAuth instead of inputting user and password directly in application.

Microsoft will disable traditional user authentication in the future, switching to Microsoft OAuth (Modern Authentication) is strongly recommended now.

• Send Email from Office365 using User Interaction OAuth
• Send Email from Office365 in Background Service

Or you can generate App Passwords and use this app password instead of your user password.

Next Section

At next section I will introduce how to send email without specified SMTP server.