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Gets and sets the content type of the selected message part.
Syntax
object.ContentType [= value]
The ContentType property syntax has the following
parts:
| Part |
Description |
| object
|
An object expression that
evaluates to an InternetMail object. |
| value
|
A string which identifies the
content contained in the current message part. |
Remarks
The ContentType property returns the MIME type for the
currently selected message part. The type string consists of a
primary type and secondary sub-type separated by a slash, followed
by one or more optional parameters delimited by semi-colons. For
example:
text/plain; charset=us-ascii
The text designation indicates that this message part
contains readable text, and the plain sub-type indicates
that the text does not contain any special encoding. The optional
parameter which follows the content type provides additional
information about the content. In this example, it specifies which
character set should be used to display the text. The two common
character sets used are ISO-8859 and US-ASCII (which is the default
character set that is used if none is specified).
There are seven predefined, standard content types, each with
their own sub-types. The following table lists these types, along
with some common sub-types that are found in messages:
| Type |
Sub-Types |
Description |
| text |
plain, richtext,
html |
Indicates that the message part
contains text. This is the most common type found in mail messages;
if no content type is explicitly defined, then it is assumed to be
plain text. |
| image |
gif, jpeg |
Indicates that the message part
contains a graphics image. |
| audio |
basic, aiff,
wav |
Indicates that the message part
contains audio data; the basic sub-type is 8-bit PCM encoded audio
(commonly found with the .au filename extension). |
| video |
mpeg, avi |
Indicates that the message part
contains a video clip in the specified format. |
| application |
octet-stream |
Indicates that the message part
contains application specific data, typically used with the
octet-stream sub-type to indicate binary file attachments for
executable programs, compressed file archives, etc. |
| message |
rfc822 |
Indicates that the message part
contains a complete RFC 822 compliant message, complete with
headers. |
| multipart |
mixed,
alternative |
Indicates that this is part of a
message that contains multiple parts with different content
types. |
The three most common content types that are used in
applications are text/plain for the mail message body,
application/octet-stream for binary file attachments and
multipart/mixed for messages that contain both text and attached
files. For more information about the different content types,
refer to the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) standards
document RFC 1521.
Data Type
String
See Also
ContentID Property, ContentLength Property
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