How to use PowerShell to send email with Send-MailMessage with Gmail example

Kris Powell|Updated January 7, 2021

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Sending Email with PowerShell (Send-MailMessage)

It’s late on a Friday night. Like most people, you have somewhere else you would rather be. Instead, you are stuck at work because you completely forgot about some scheduled maintenance that has to be done that night.

You’re familiar enough with PowerShell to make some scripts to take care of the maintenance, but you’re worried about the off-chance that one of the scripts fails or you’re worried that something could go wrong.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could start your scripts and configure them to email you the results? You could still get out, enjoy your Friday night and rest assured that your scripts are doing their job without you losing yours!

(Disclaimer: We do not condone the shirking of any responsibilities that you may have…especially on Friday nights.)

Sending Email with PowerShell (Send-MailMessage)

There are a multiple ways to send an email with PowerShell. This is a native cmdlet option that is simple and easy to use. It uses the cmdlet Send-MailMessage.

Send-MailMessage <parameters>

List of available parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
–Attachments	string	The full path and filenames to be attached to the email.
–Bcc	string	Email addresses that you would like to bcc.
–Body	string	The body of the email message.
–BodyAsHtml	boolean	Indicates that the value of the Body parameter contains HTML.
–Cc	string	Addresses that you would like to cc.
–Credential	PSCredential	An account that has permission to send the email. The default is the current user.
-DeliveryNotificationOption	DeliveryNotificationOptions	Delivery notifications will be sent to the email address specified in the –From parameter. None – No notification (default) OnSuccess – Notify if the delivery is successful. OnFailure – Notify if the delivery is unsuccessful. Delay – Notify if the delivery is delayed. Never – Never notify.
–Encoding	Encoding	The encoding used for the body and subject.
–From	string	The address from which the mail is sent.
-Port	integer	Specifies an alternate port on the SMTP server. The default value is 25, which is the default SMTP port.
–Priority	MailPriority	The priority of the email message. Valid values: Low, Normal (default), High
–SmtpServer	string	The name of the SMTP server that sends the email message.
–Subject	string	The subject of the email message.
–To	string	The addresses you wish to send email to.
–UseSsl	boolean	Use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to establish a connection to the SMTP server to send email. SSL is not used by default.

Examples of Usage:

Example 1) Sending a simple email

Send-MailMessage -From "email@yourdomain.com" -To "AnotherEmail@yourdomain.com" -Credentials (Get-Credential) -SmtpServer "smtp.yourdomain.com"

Example 2) Sending an email from Gmail

Here’s a full example of sending an email via Gmail’s SMTP servers. It will prompt you for a username and password thanks to (Get-Credential). The username needs to be and password needs to be , though you could always pipe in a PSCredential and get the same effect.

##############################################################################
$From = "YourEmail@gmail.com"
$To = "AnotherEmail@YourDomain.com"
$Cc = "YourBoss@YourDomain.com"
$Attachment = "C:\temp\Some random file.txt"
$Subject = "Email Subject"
$Body = "Insert body text here"
$SMTPServer = "smtp.gmail.com"
$SMTPPort = "587"
Send-MailMessage -From $From -to $To -Cc $Cc -Subject $Subject `
-Body $Body -SmtpServer $SMTPServer -port $SMTPPort -UseSsl `
-Credential (Get-Credential) -Attachments $Attachment
##############################################################################

Best of luck to you in your emailing endeavors.

Did you know that PDQ Deploy has a PowerShell step you can use to deploy your scripts?

Kris Powell

Kris was an employee at PDQ.

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