how to send mail using phpmailer on xampp

Question

I have been trying to send a mail using php mailer on xampp and i do get this error saying Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: The following From address failed: xxxx2@gmail.com : Called Mail() without being connected

please, i need help on how to fix this. Here is my code;

<?php
require( 'class.phpmailer.php' );

  $mail = new PHPMailer;
  $mail->IsSMTP();
  $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
  $mail->Host = "tls://smtp.gmail.com";
  $mail->Port = 25;
  $mail->Username = "xxxx@gmail.com";
  $mail->Password = "xxxxx";
  //Sending the actual email
  $mail->setFrom('xxxx2@gmail.com', 'Aaron');
  $mail->addAddress('xxxx2@gmail.com', 'Aaron');     // Add a recipient
  $mail->isHTML(false);                                  // Set email format to HTML
  $mail->Subject = 'Calculation form results from ';
  $mail->Body = 'testing...';

  if(!$mail->send()) {
    echo 'Message could not be sent. ';
    echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
    exit;
  }
?>

Answer 1

Literally copied from https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/blob/master/examples/gmail.phps

//Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer;

//Tell PHPMailer to use SMTP
$mail->isSMTP();

//Set the hostname of the mail server
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
// use
// $mail->Host = gethostbyname('smtp.gmail.com');
// if your network does not support SMTP over IPv6

//Set the SMTP port number - 587 for authenticated TLS
$mail->Port = 587;

//Set the encryption system to use - ssl (deprecated) or tls
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';

//Whether to use SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;

//Username to use for SMTP authentication - use full email address for gmail
$mail->Username = "username@gmail.com";

//Password to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Password = "yourpassword";

//Set who the message is to be sent from
$mail->setFrom('from@example.com', 'First Last');

//Set an alternative reply-to address
$mail->addReplyTo('replyto@example.com', 'First Last');

//Set who the message is to be sent to
$mail->addAddress('whoto@example.com', 'John Doe');

Answer 2

I tried with Composer and github, but couldn't get the latest version of phpmailer to work with my test php email through xampp. When I ran the program on localhost, it kept crashing out, as the email code was looking for the php mailer class. So I went back to google, ignored composer, and downloaded a plain ordinary zip of php mailer 5.2.0, and extracted this zip directly into my 'websiteX' testing folder which is located in htdocs in xampp.

In my 'websiteX' folder I have my testmail.php file along with my phpmailer unzipped folder and it contains the class.phpmailer which actually works in my case.

I have spent a week faffing around, but now I have xampp php emails going to my test gmail account perfectly. I use chrome and notepad++ as well.

Funnily enough I had php emails with the php mail() command working too, although Gmail hard bounced 'em, which isnt great. The first thing I did last week was to get Mercury mail (included in xampp) working. I followed this link https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Mercury_Mail_Configuration_in_Windows and managed to get xampp communicating with gmail which was great!

Good luck with your coding.