Outlook connectivity

Question

Hi all,
Am working on a project in which i had to send mails to a list of email ids from a database. But the mail server is running a firewall and blocking any attempt to connect to it using port 25(exchange server), and am not able to connect using java mail api, it returns a -1 value when attempting to connect to port 25.
As i had configured the outlook to send mails to exchange, is there any way to create an outlook message object and send mails using outlook (in java). i can be able to find some code snippets using .net, but not in java.
can anybody provide me a link or a code snippet
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I don't know if this is much help, but unfortunaly the Exchange server I had to deal with had most of the IMAP options disabled, so I had to port my request through an ActiveX control using JACOB. (http://users.rcn.com/danadler/jacob/)
Using this you could use outlook to send and recive. This is the most backwards way I possibly could do it but since I had time constraints and no real experience with the mail protocols, or the JAVAMail API, it was my first, last, and most desperate option. But since I couldn�t find anything when I searched the forum that didn�t involve using something that required money I thought why not post the code here. Big props to the JACOB team. If you still have those NET snipits you need to rewrite them but just follow the same code path. (they should use the same Outlook object model)
I suppose you could express my JAVA life with Microsoft as a J++ programmer try to go to Sun in this quote,
�Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.� - Michael in Godfather III
EX.)
import com.jacob.com.*;
import com.jacob.activeX.*;
class ��.
Method{
ActiveXComponent axOutlook = new ActiveXComponent("Outlook.Application");
Object oNameSpace = axOutlook.getProperty("Session").toDispatch();
// then from the NameSpace get the AddressLists, Messages, SyncObjects ect..
// Also you will have to add code to setup under the user you want to access the server with unless you preconfigure that in Outlook since you are just scripting it from outside (this may lead you to security issues, but i havent had any yet)
// I�d recommend Opening Outlook�s VB Editor and use the Object Explorer to get the right names of things since all these errors will be thrown at runtime if you mess up (Also I use the pull down menu to limit the Objects you see to Outlook)
The examples given with the JACOB package should help you figure out the JNI like calls (There is one that uses Outlook in the test folder)