19 Comments
  •   Posted in: 
  • C#
I've seen a couple posts on this before but they all seem to miss out a critical piece of code that without, causes the images to be embedded but they do not display correctly in some e-mail clients (such as Outlook 2003/2007). The following code will make it work across a number of clients I've tested it with and I've also thrown in a basic way to have a plain text e-mail attached as well in case the client does not support HTML.

Disclaimer: I've chosen to use the media type of JPEG, it's not ideal but it's something I threw together to get the main point across. You should really get the file extension and use a switch statement for the different media types. 
public static void SendMessageWithEmbeddedImages()
{
  string htmlMessage = @"<html>
                         <body>
                         <img src='cid:EmbeddedContent_1' />
                         </body>
                         </html>";
  SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient("mail.server.com");
  MailMessage msg = new MailMessage("[email protected]",
                                    "[email protected]");
  // Create the HTML view
  AlternateView htmlView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(
                                               htmlMessage,
                                               Encoding.UTF8,
                                               MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);
  // Create a plain text message for client that don't support HTML
  AlternateView plainView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(
                                              Regex.Replace(htmlMessage,
                                                            "<[^>]+?>",
                                                            string.Empty),
                                              Encoding.UTF8,
                                              MediaTypeNames.Text.Plain);
  string mediaType = MediaTypeNames.Image.Jpeg;
  LinkedResource img = new LinkedResource(@"C:\Images\MyImage.jpg", mediaType);
  // Make sure you set all these values!!!
  img.ContentId = "EmbeddedContent_1";
  img.ContentType.MediaType = mediaType;
  img.TransferEncoding = TransferEncoding.Base64;
  img.ContentType.Name = img.ContentId;
  img.ContentLink = new Uri("cid:" + img.ContentId);
  htmlView.LinkedResources.Add(img);
  //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  msg.AlternateViews.Add(plainView);
  msg.AlternateViews.Add(htmlView);
  msg.IsBodyHtml = true;
  msg.Subject = "Some subject";
  client.Send(msg);
}
I couldn't find this information anywhere but I tried setting a whole bunch of things until the images displayed correctly, hope this helps someone with the same issues.

Expect to see this feature in my Command Line E-mailer application so that sending HTML e-mails appear the way you designed them locally when they arrive at the recipient.

Comments

Comment by Israel Hernández

Good article. I was research a lot in Internet about solution to show images on email, but these solutions don't work fine in all the clients. But with your article my email looks great.
Thanks.

Comment by Des Owen

Your solution works great and displays embedded images nicely on iOS 10 devices, which is perfect. Thanks for your efforts; saved me a ton of grief.

Comment by Cornelio Cawicaan

OMG! Thank you good sir. This solved my problem.

Cornelio Cawicaan
Comment by Vikram Rathaur

Great article.Really very helpful and resolved my problem.

Vikram Rathaur
Comment by Edwin Franco

Great article, it worked fine, but when I get the email, I can see in the emails list the clases inside of <style type=text/css/> ;before this, it didnt happen, I will figure out what happen, thank you.

Edwin Franco
Comment by laila

tnx, great

laila
Comment by Jim Parzych

Thank you. Extremely helpful and concise.

Jim Parzych
Comment by Mat Sugahara

Great alternative approach! It would be very handy though, if you could post the resulting structure as well. (the final email sourcecode)

Mat Sugahara
Comment by Tim

Thanks, now my logo image works:-)

Tim
Comment by Kurva

A ton of thanks for this great article. I had an issue with displaying images in the email content. Your article helped me a lot in resolving the issue.

Kurva
Comment by Gianni

1.000.000 of tons of thanks for this great article. I had an issue with displaying images in the email content. Your article helped me a lot in resolving the issue. (and feel good a lot!!!!)

Gianni
Comment by Remy

simply superb, really appreciate your help !! :-)

Remy
Comment by ORLANDO

It works great. Thank you very much!!

ORLANDO
Comment by Pankit Patel

This is exactly what we needed. Thank you very much!

Comment by Alberto

It works great. Thanks.!
Excelente trabajo amigo, funciona a la perfección.
La mejor explicación que he encontrado.
Felicitacioes !!!
Muchas Gracias :-)

Alberto
Comment by Krah

Thank you ^^

Krah
Comment by Vasu kushwah

Made it very useful for me. Thank you so much !! :

Vasu kushwah
Comment by Vladan

Thanks a lot, still excellent code in 2022 :)

Vladan
Comment by Eddie Reimer

Man thanks a lot, I used a translation from telerik to VB from this C# and was easy to implement into my project, brutal developer you rule

Eddie Reimer
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