Fast Way to Create and Send Email

An easy way to create and send email in VB (or any other language) is to use the "mailto:" protocol that already works on client computers. The technique makes a request to the installed email client, and works with Outlook, Lotus Notes, and other registered email clients.

You can't use the standard VB Shell function; instead, you call the Windows ShellExecute API to send email.

Put this code in a module called Module1.bas:

Public Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32" _
   Alias "ShellExecuteA" ( _
   ByVal hwnd As Long, _
   ByVal lpOperation As String, _
   ByVal lpFile As String, _
   ByVal lpParameters As String, _
   ByVal lpDirectory As String, _
   ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long

   'Constants for ShowWindow (nCmdShow)
   Public Const SW_HIDDEN As Long = 0
   Public Const SW_NORMAL As Long = 1
   Public Const SW_MINIMIZED As Long = 2
   Public Const SW_MAXIMIZED As Long = 3
   Public Const SW_NOTACTIVE As Long = 4
   Public Const SW_UNHIDDEN As Long = 5
   Public Const SW_MINWITHFOCUS As Long = 6
   Public Const SW_MINNOTACTIVE As Long = 7
   Public Const SW_RESTORE As Long = 9

You'll need a form to enter an email address. Open the default Form1.frm, in design mode, and place three Textboxes and a Command Button on the form. Then add this code to handle the control events:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
   Dim Email As String
   Email = "mailto:" & Text1.Text _
      & "?subject=" & Text2.Text _
      & "&body=" & MailTo_StringConverter(Text3.Text)
   ShellExecute Me.hwnd, vbNullString, _
      Email, vbNullString, vbNullString, SW_MAXIMIZED
End Sub

Private Function MailTo_StringConverter(Text As String) As String
   Dim CharIndex As Integer
   Dim CharLength As Integer
   Dim ASCIIcode As Integer
    
   MailTo_StringConverter = Text

   'easy tecnique to speed up For cicle!!
   CharLength = Len(MailTo_StringConverter)
    
   For CharIndex = CharLength To 1 Step -1
      ASCIIcode = Asc(Mid$(MailTo_StringConverter, CharIndex, 1))
      If (ASCIIcode < vbKey0 Or ASCIIcode > vbKey9) _
         And (ASCIIcode < vbKeyA Or ASCIIcode > vbKeyZ) _
         And (ASCIIcode < vbKeyA + 32 Or ASCIIcode > vbKeyZ + 32) Then
         ' replace punctuation chars with "%hex"
         MailTo_StringConverter = Left$( _
            MailTo_StringConverter, CharIndex - 1) _
            & "%" & ASCIIcode2HexChar(ASCIIcode) _
            & Mid$(MailTo_StringConverter, CharIndex + 1)
      End If
   Next
End Function

Private Function ASCIIcode2HexChar(ASCIIcode As Integer) As String
    If ASCIIcode < 16 Then
        'need leading zero to complete 2 bytes !!!
        ASCIIcode2HexChar = "0" & Hex$(ASCIIcode)
    Else 'all ok, Hex$ returned string has 2 bytes
        ASCIIcode2HexChar = Hex$(ASCIIcode)
    End If
End Function