The Mail Message ActiveX control provides an interface for
composing and processing email messages and newsgroup articles which
are structured according to the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(MIME) standard. Using this control, an application can easily create
complex messages which include multiple alternative content types,
such as plain text and styled HTML text, file attachments and
customized headers.
It is not required that the developer understand the complex MIME
standard; a single method can be used to create multipart message,
complete with a styled HTML text body and support for international
character sets. The Mail Message control can be easily integrated
with the other mail related components, making it extremely easy to
create and process MIME formatted messages.
The control also includes an interface for managing a local
message storage file that can be used to store and retrieve multiple
messages. Methods are provided to open and create storage files, add,
remove and extract messages from storage, and search the stored
messages for specific header field values.
The SocketTools ActiveX Edition components are self-registering
controls that are compatible with any programming language that
supports the Component Object Model (COM) and the ActiveX control
specification. If you are using Visual Basic 6.0, Service Pack 6 (SP6)
is required. We recommend installing all available updates for your
development tools. Although the Visual Basic 6.0 runtime is supported
on Windows 11, the IDE itself is no longer officially supported by
Microsoft. Legacy IDEs and compilers may also require elevated
(administrator) privileges to run properly.
The ActiveX controls are supported on Windows 7, Windows Server
2008 R2, and later versions of both desktop and server editions of
Windows. For Windows 7, Service Pack 1 (SP1) is the minimum
requirement. For Windows 8 systems, the 8.1 update must be installed.
On ARM-based platforms, the minimum supported version is Windows 10
build 1709.
SocketTools includes components for both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit
(x64) Windows platforms. All modern versions of Windows are 64-bit,
but we continue to include 32-bit components for compatibility with
legacy development tools such as Visual Basic 6.0. We also provide
native ARM64 ActiveX controls for systems running Windows on ARM. Note
that 32-bit applications on ARM run using x86 emulation, and Microsoft
no longer supports native ARM32 applications.
If you are using VBScript, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), or
another scripting environment on an ARM-based system, be aware that
64-bit hosts will require ARM64 components, while 32-bit hosts will
use x86 components under emulation. This includes applications created
with Visual Basic 6.0. To reduce deployment complexity and avoid
confusion, SocketTools does not include ARM32 ActiveX controls in its
standard redistribution packages but they are available on request for
legacy or specialized scenarios.
When you distribute an application that uses this control, you can
either install the file in the same folder as your application
executable or as a shared component in the appropriate system folder.
If you install the control in the system folder, it is important that
you distribute the correct version for the target platform and it
must be registered. If you install the control in the same folder as
your executable, it is recommended that you use registration-free
activation or COM redirection to ensure that the correct version of
the control is loaded by the application.