For this first you convert RTF to HTML body of mail and send it.

And on recive site you convert HTML To RFT body of mail and show it.

Eric - I can use that and in this case it did determine that the VB8 syntax for BodyEncoding was "MyMailMsg.BodyEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8". HoweverI found the example only handled HTML intpu; my RTF sent from a RichTextBox still got mailed unformatted.

For this first you convert RTF to HTML body of mail and send it.

And on recive site you convert HTML To RFT body of mail and show it.

Sorry I responded to Eric promptly but goofed somehow and it went into never never land.

The submission for which Eric found the reference was exactly my problem - wanting to send RTF. The solutions offered there suggest that there may be no direct approach. Two used other programs as starting points, Outlook and Word and the third required converting to HTML. The latter is a viable solution for my particular need where we, in our retired community, use a program to automatically send three batches of 95 each, ASCII messages to our membership (to avoid spam limits of our ISP). I would like to send formatted but not do the formatting - cut and paste from submission from members, typically in Word. However I have tried that and a converted Word document to HTML loses it formatting (the third example given displayed nothing); however I can created my own HTML document and it sends find. But again, in our case the postmaster does not do the formatting and I cannot get the garbaged HTML that Word creates to send properly.

I'll continue to struggle with using HTML, as Navaratan also suggested. Will try with a simple Text box and my sending source rather than a Rich Text Box.