# Programmatically adding an Excel attachment

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmatically-adding-an-excel-attachment/157846>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 15, 2009, 10:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmatically-adding-an-excel-attachment/157846 "2009-01-15T22:25:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gregarican](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/7feea3/32.png) [@gregarican](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/gregarican)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 10:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmatically-adding-an-excel-attachment/157846/1 "2009-01-15T22:25:43Z")

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I’ve checked out this page →

> **[Sending Email using Ruby - SMTP](http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ruby/ruby_sending_email.htm)**
>
> Sending Email using Ruby SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a protocol, which handles sending e-mail and routing e-mail between mail servers.

that shows how to e-mail a text file attachment.I’m trying to attach  
an Excel file, but the receiver gets a corrupted file attachment. I’ve  
changed the Content-Type: in the MIME header to application/vnd.ms-  
excel but it doesn’t seem to work. Anyone care to offer a quick code  
snippet that will fit the bill?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gregarican](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/7feea3/32.png) [@gregarican](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/gregarican)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 4:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmatically-adding-an-excel-attachment/157846/2 "2009-01-16T16:35:51Z")

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On Jan 15, 4:23 pm, gregarican [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I’ve checked out this page → [Sending Email using Ruby - SMTP](http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ruby/ruby_sending_email.htm)  
> that shows how to e-mail a text file attachment.I’m trying to attach  
> an Excel file, but the receiver gets a corrupted file attachment. I’ve  
> changed the Content-Type: in the MIME header to application/vnd.ms-  
> excel but it doesn’t seem to work. Anyone care to offer a quick code  
> snippet that will fit the bill?

I solved my own problem. It was just a question of me not parsing the  
Excel file correctly. Since I was basing things off sample code that  
opened plain text files to send as attachments, I wasn’t building the  
attachment properly. Here’s a snipped of my little routine. Works like  
a champ, and I didn’t have to install ActionMailer or any other module  
since I cobbled the code together manually. It will fit the bill!

Code is below if anyone runs into a similar quandary.

* * *

# Read a file and encode it into base64 format

savedDoc = path+filename  
file = File.open(savedDoc, ‘rb’)  
filecontent = file.read()  
encodedcontent = [filecontent].pack(“m\*”) # base64

marker = “AUNIQUEMARKER”

body =\<\<EOF  
Attached is your Excel spreadsheet!  
EOF

# Define the main headers.

part1 =\<\<EOF  
From: Me [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
To: You [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
Subject: Message with Excel Attachment  
MIME-Version: 1.0  
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=#{marker}  
–#{marker}  
EOF

# Define the message action

part2 =\<\<EOF  
Content-Type: text/plain  
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

#{body}  
–#{marker}  
EOF

# Define the attachment section

part3 =\<\<EOF  
Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel; name="#{filename}"  
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64  
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=“#{filename}”  
Content-Description: “#{filename}”

#{encodedcontent}  
–#{marker}–  
EOF

mailtext = part1 + part2 + part3

# Let’s put our code in safe area

begin  
Net::SMTP.start(server=localhost, port=25) do |smtp|  
smtp.sendmail(mailtext, ‘removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid’, ‘removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid’)  
end  
rescue Exception =\> e  
print "Exception occured: " + e  
end