How to send email to multiple recipients using python smtplib

Question

After much searching I couldn t find out how to use smtplib sendmail to send to multiple recipients   The problem was every time the mail would be sent the mail headers would appear to contain multiple addresses  but in fact only the first recipient would receive the email   The problem seems to be that the email Message module expects something different than the smtplib sendmail   function   In short  to send to multiple recipients you should set the header to be a string of comma delimited email addresses   The sendmail   parameter to addrs however should be a list of email addresses   from email MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart from email MIMEText import MIMEText import smtplib  msg   MIMEMultipart   msg  Subject      Example  msg  From      me example com  msg  To      malcom example com reynolds example com firefly example com  msg  Cc      serenity example com inara example com  body   MIMEText  example email body   msg attach body  smtp   smtplib SMTP  mailhost example com   25  smtp sendmail msg  From    msg  To   split        msg  Cc   split       msg as string    smtp quit

User · Answer

You need to understand the difference between the visible address of an email, and the delivery.

msg["To"] is essentially what is printed on the letter. It doesn't actually have any effect. Except that your email client, just like the regular post officer, will assume that this is who you want to send the email to.

The actual delivery however can work quite different. So you can drop the email (or a copy) into the post box of someone completely different.

There are various reasons for this. For example forwarding. The To: header field doesn't change on forwarding, however the email is dropped into a different mailbox.

The smtp.sendmail command now takes care of the actual delivery. email.Message is the contents of the letter only, not the delivery.

In low-level SMTP, you need to give the receipients one-by-one, which is why a list of adresses (not including names!) is the sensible API.

For the header, it can also contain for example the name, e.g. To: First Last <[email protected]>, Other User <[email protected]>. Your code example therefore is not recommended, as it will fail delivering this mail, since just by splitting it on , you still not not have the valid adresses!

User · Answer

The msg  To   needs to be a string   msg  To      a b com  b b com  c b com    While the recipients in sendmail sender  recipients  message  needs to be a list   sendmail  a a com     a b com    b b com    c b com     Howdy

User · Answer

The solution below worked for me  It successfully sends an email to multiple recipients  including  CC  and  BCC    toaddr     mailid 1   mailid 2   cc     mailid 3   mailid 4   bcc     mailid 5   mailid 6   subject    Email from Python Code  fromaddr    sender mailid  message     n     Hello         msg  From     fromaddr msg  To          join toaddr  msg  Cc          join cc  msg  Bcc          join bcc  msg  Subject     subject  s sendmail fromaddr   toaddr cc bcc    message

User · Answer

This really works  I spent a lot of time trying multiple variants   import smtplib from email mime text import MIMEText  s   smtplib SMTP  smtp uk xensource com   s set debuglevel 1  msg   MIMEText    body     sender    me example com  recipients     john doe example com    john smith example co uk   msg  Subject      subject line  msg  From     sender msg  To          join recipients  s sendmail sender  recipients  msg as string

User · Answer

It works for me   import smtplib from email mime text import MIMEText  s   smtplib SMTP  smtp uk xensource com   s set debuglevel 1  msg   MIMEText    body     sender    me example com  recipients    john doe example com john smith example co uk  msg  Subject      subject line  msg  From     sender msg  To     recipients s sendmail sender  recipients split       msg as string

User · Answer

I tried the below and it worked like a charm     rec list      first example com    second example com   rec         join rec list   msg  To     rec  send out   smtplib SMTP  localhost   send out sendmail me  rec list  msg as string

User · Answer

you can try this when you write the recpient emails on a text file  from email mime text import MIMEText from email header import Header import smtplib  f    open  emails txt    r   readlines   for n in f       emails   n rstrip   server   smtplib SMTP  smtp uk xensource com   server ehlo   server starttls   body    Test Email  subject    Test  from    me example com  to   emails msg   MIMEText body  plain   utf-8   msg  Subject     Header subject   utf-8   msg  From      Header from   utf-8   msg  To     Header to   utf-8   text   msg as string   try     server send from  emails  text     print  Message Sent Succesfully   except     print  There Was An Error While Sending The Message

User · Answer

Well  the method in this asnwer method did not work for me  I don t know  maybe this is a Python3  I am using the 3 4 version  or gmail related issue  but after some tries  the solution that worked for me  was the line  s send message msg    instead of  s sendmail sender  recipients  msg as string

User · Answer

I came up with this importable module function  It uses the gmail email server in this example  Its split into header and message so you can clearly see whats going on   import smtplib  def send alert subject           to     email one com    email2 another email com    a3rd email com       gmail user    me gmail com      gmail pwd    my pass      smtpserver   smtplib SMTP  smtp gmail com   587      smtpserver ehlo       smtpserver starttls       smtpserver ehlo     smtpserver login gmail user  gmail pwd      header    To          join to      n     From      gmail user     n     Subject      subject     n      msg   header     n    subject     n n      smtpserver sendmail gmail user  to  msg      smtpserver close

User · Answer

import smtplib from email mime multipart import MIMEMultipart from email mime text import MIMEText  def sender recipients         body    Your email content here      msg   MIMEMultipart        msg  Subject      Email Subject      msg  From      your email gmail com      msg  To            join recipients split            msg attach MIMEText body  plain         server   smtplib SMTP  smtp gmail com   587      server starttls       server login  your email gmail com    yourpassword       server send message msg      server quit    if   name         main         sender  email 1 domain com email 2 domain com     It only worked for me with send message function and using the join function in the list whith recipients  python 3 6

User · Answer

So actually the problem is that SMTP sendmail and email MIMEText need two different things   email MIMEText sets up the  To   header for the body of the e-mail  It is ONLY used for displaying a result to the human being at the other end  and like all e-mail headers  must be a single string   Note that it does not actually have to have anything to do with the people who actually receive the message    SMTP sendmail  on the other hand  sets up the  envelope  of the message for the SMTP protocol  It needs a Python list of strings  each of which has a single address   So  what you need to do is COMBINE the two replies you received  Set msg  To   to a single string  but pass the raw list to sendmail   emails     a com   b com    c com   msg  To          join  emails         s sendmail  msg  From    emails  msg as string

User · Answer

I figured this out a few months back and blogged about it  The summary is   If you want to use smtplib to send email to multiple recipients  use email Message add header  To   eachRecipientAsString  to add them  and then when you invoke the sendmail method  use email Message get all  To   send the message to all of them  Ditto for Cc and Bcc recipients

User · Answer

I use python 3 6 and the following code works for me  email send    xxxxx xxx xxx xxxx xxx xxx  server sendmail email user email send split      text

[python] How to send email to multiple recipients using python smtplib?

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