Send Email Using R-Program

Apr 24, 2018·3 min read

Using mailR & GMail

To send email using the R programming language we will need to install the “mailR” package and have a GMail account from Google. We will also use Googles smtp server to send the message.

In this article I assume you already have R and RStudio installed on your computer, and a Gmail account if you do not already have a Gmail account, you can sign up here. If you do not already have R and RStudio installed I have another article showing you the easy steps to do so here.

Install R and RStudio On Windows

Install the R-Programming Language and it’s IDE RStudio

medium.com

If you do not already have “mailR” installed, run the following in your RStudio Console.

install.packages("mailR")

Use the code below either as a R script or run it in the RStudio console to send email. Just replace the ‘your_email’ value with your actual Gmail account, the ‘recipient_email’ with your recipient email address and ‘your_email_password’ with the password of your Gmail account.

#install.packages("mailR")
library(mailR)
sender <- "your_email@gmail.com"
recipients <- c("recipient_email@gmail.com")
send.mail(from = sender,
          to = recipients,
          subject = "Test mail from Rstudio",
          body = "Test email body",
          smtp = list(host.name = "smtp.gmail.com", port = 465, 
                      user.name = "your_email@gmail.com",            
                      passwd = "your_email_password", ssl = TRUE),
          authenticate = TRUE,
          send = TRUE)

You may get the following error message

org.apache.commons.mail.EmailException: Sending the email to the following server failed : smtp.gmail.com:465
    at org.apache.commons.mail.Email.sendMimeMessage(Email.java:1410)
    at org.apache.commons.mail.Email.send(Email.java:1437)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at RJavaTools.invokeMethod(RJavaTools.java:386)
Caused by: javax.mail.AuthenticationFailedException: 534-5.7.14 <https://accounts.google.com/signin/continue?sarp=1&scc=1&plt=AKgnsbuu
534-5.7.14 XIuKGOx55rNHFSvDWkzr2B1augfG-Z1zGTYEQ9IZ-iD_aDivhY0aUWNjt0C4ckYrqyx0WS
534-5.7.14 Zbz-1z65Xz8C1irD5crNwDSpgL3qQGgo6V-PvkiA6h1on6Hnn-YjSeho0uBWcG59x1C4TH
534-5.7.14 F6ZM2i2TToB9tIjzoUv_3encd3EW0Aw04XBaTVkoWseyUOaTTvglnCIj23ZNrIncqXW0f5
534-5.7.14 gjMKNtrSAOBmJxrgnXGrRS2BC9y9Q> Please log in via your web browser and
534-5.7.14 then try again.
534-5.7.14  Learn more at
534 5.7.14  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78754 t62sm25604268pfa.38 - gsmtp

    at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport$Authenticator.authenticate(SMTPTransport.java:892)
    at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.authenticate(SMTPTransport.java:814)
    at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.protocolConnect(SMTPTransport.java:728)
    at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:386)
    at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:245)
    at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:194)
    at javax.mail.Transport.send0(Transport.java:253)
    at javax.mail.Transport.send(Transport.java:124)
    at org.apache.commons.mail.Email.sendMimeMessage(Email.java:1400)
    ... 6 more
Error: EmailException (Java): Sending the email to the following server failed : smtp.gmail.com:465

To fix it you may need to enable access to ‘less secure apps’ here:
http://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

Thanks for reading this article I hope its helpful to you all ! Keep up the learning, and if you would like math, computer science, programming and algorithm analysis videos please visit and subscribe to my YouTube channels (randerson112358 & compsci112358 )