I have been banging my head against this for a few weeks. I am not able to get LimeSurvey to send emails using PHPMailer. I have looked through the PHPMailer documentation to no avail.

Is there a guide somewhere that is dedicated to configuring LimeSurvey using the PHP mail option and connection to Gmail?

Thanks!

I am not an expert on this, but as far as I know, the 'PHP mail' option is using the proper PHP installation to send emails, no external SMTP server or Service. At least that is how I know it.

If you want to use Gmail to send your emails, you need to go with the SMTP option. But be aware that Gmail is not a good option for sending mass emails. They have strict rules, both for sending and for receiving mass emails.

The PHPMailer package distributed with LimeSurvey has the OAuth.php file included in the .../src/ directory. PHPMailer has the capability to connect to Google via a token and send emails. I just can't seem to get it working.

LS might not make use of this feature of PHPMailer, I don't know. You probably can only use the features provided by the LS-GUI. Let's see what others more knowledgeable than me have to say on the topic.

holch wrote: LS might not make use of this feature of PHPMailer.

That is the case with OAuth. The big SaaS provider like Google and Microsoft are switching access to mailserver to OAuth.

OAuth and Google: developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2

I recommend to open a feature request for OAuth support. For SMTP OAuth is not needed for a long time.
So you won't see many posts about that topic here.

Some settings of the phpmailer can be set via the config file of LimeSurvey.