Cannot get IIS pickup directory

Question

I’ve been using the Smtp server 127.0.0.1 .The error I get:

System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: Cannot get IIS pickup directory.at System.Net.Mail.IisPickupDirectory.GetPickupDirectory().

This Error occured ,when Email send from ASP web page.But EMail send from ASP.NET page,error is not occurred. Plz help .

Answer 1

I was having this same error on Windows 7 with code that worked fine on XP. After much trial and error. I setup IIS to store mail in a pickup directory. But I still had the error.

In my code I commented out the line:

client.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.PickupDirectoryFromIis;

Removing this line of code worked, not sure why. Hope it works for you too because this issue is a real time waster to troublshoot.

I did NOT have to change any permissions on the directory. I did NOT have to modify the metabase. I did NOT have to modify the web.config (which I really didn't want to do because I only want the emails placed into a directory while I'm doing development on my local machine, not in production - I didn't want two different web.config files to maintain).

Answer 2

Unfortunately, this exception is raised when any kind of problem occurs while trying to determine the location of IIS/SMTP pickup directory. A common cause is missing IIS SMTP service.

If you are sending mail using System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient, try setting the pickup directory manually:

// C#
var client = new SmtpClient();
client.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.SpecifiedPickupDirectory;
client.PickupDirectoryLocation = ...;
client.Send(...);

Or set this in ASP.NET's Web.config instead:

<configuration>
    <system.net>
        <mailSettings>
            <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
                <specifiedPickupDirectory
                    pickupDirectoryLocation="..." />
                <network defaultCredentials="false" />
            </smtp>
        </mailSettings>
    </system.net>
</configuration> 

Alternatively, use SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network method instead and sent the Host and Port properties to your SMTP server.

More information: http://forums.iis.net/p/1149338/1869548.aspx