MailMessage.AlternateViews Property

Definition

Gets the attachment collection used to store alternate forms of the message body.

C#
public System.Net.Mail.AlternateViewCollection AlternateViews { get; }

Property Value

A writable AlternateViewCollection.

Examples

The following code example demonstrates creating and sending an email message with a plain text and an HTML alternate view.

C#
public static void CreateMessageWithMultipleViews(string server, string recipients)
{
    // Create a message and set up the recipients.
    MailMessage message = new MailMessage(
        "jane@contoso.com",
        recipients,
        "This email message has multiple views.",
        "This is some plain text.");

    // Construct the alternate body as HTML.
    string body = "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">";
    body += "<HTML><HEAD><META http-equiv=Content-Type content=\"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\">";
    body += "</HEAD><BODY><DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#ff0000 size=2>this is some HTML text";
    body += "</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>";

    ContentType mimeType = new System.Net.Mime.ContentType("text/html");
    // Add the alternate body to the message.

    AlternateView alternate = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(body, mimeType);
    message.AlternateViews.Add(alternate);

    // Send the message.
    SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient(server);
    client.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;

    try
    {
        client.Send(message);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Exception caught in CreateMessageWithMultipleViews(): {0}",
            ex.ToString());
    }
    // Display the values in the ContentType for the attachment.
    ContentType c = alternate.ContentType;
    Console.WriteLine("Content type");
    Console.WriteLine(c.ToString());
    Console.WriteLine("Boundary {0}", c.Boundary);
    Console.WriteLine("CharSet {0}", c.CharSet);
    Console.WriteLine("MediaType {0}", c.MediaType);
    Console.WriteLine("Name {0}", c.Name);
    Console.WriteLine("Parameters: {0}", c.Parameters.Count);
    foreach (DictionaryEntry d in c.Parameters)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("{0} = {1}", d.Key, d.Value);
    }
    Console.WriteLine();
    alternate.Dispose();
}

Remarks

Use the AlternateViews property to specify copies of an email message in different formats. For example, if you send a message in HTML, you might also want to provide a plain text version in case some of the recipients use email readers that cannot display HTML content.

To add an alternate view to a MailMessage object, create an Attachment for the view, and then add it to the collection returned by AlternateViews. Use the Body property to specify the text version and use the AlternateViews collection to specify views with other MIME types. Use the MediaTypeNames class members to specify the MIME type for the alternate view.

Applies to

Product Versions
.NET Core 2.0, Core 2.1, Core 2.2, Core 3.0, Core 3.1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
.NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8, 4.8.1
.NET Standard 2.0, 2.1