Clearly documented reading of emails functionality with python win32com outlook

Question

I\'m trying to understand outlook interaction through win32com better. I\'ve been unable to find clear documentation that allows me to utilise win32com to read emails effec

Answer 1

The visual basic for applications reference is your friend here. Try starting with this link...

Interop Outlook Mailitem Properties

For instance I can see that message will probably have additional properties than what you listed above. For example.

• message.CC
• message.Importance
• message.LastModificationTime

Answer 2

For everyone wondering how to reach any default folder not just "Inbox" here's the list:

3  Deleted Items
4  Outbox
5  Sent Items
6  Inbox
9  Calendar
10 Contacts
11 Journal
12 Notes
13 Tasks
14 Drafts

There are more (Reminders, Sync errors etc.); you can get whole list with this code (inspired by John Cook's solution to Folders):

import win32com
outlook=win32com.client.Dispatch("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace("MAPI")
for i in range(50):
    try:
        box = outlook.GetDefaultFolder(i)
        name = box.Name
        print(i, name)
    except:
        pass

I'm not pasting the whole list here, because mine is in Polish and wouldn't be really helpful.

Answer 3

I thought I'd add something on navigating through folders too - this is all derived from the Microsoft documentation above, but might be helpful to have here, particularly if you're trying to go anywhere in the Outlook folder structure except the inbox.

You can navigate through the folders collection using folders - note in this case, there's no GetDefaultFolder after the GetNamespace (otherwise you'll likely end up with the inbox).

outlook = win32com.client.Dispatch("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace('MAPI')
folder = outlook.Folders[1]

The number is the index of the folder you want to access. To find out how many sub-folders are in there:

folder.Count

If there more sub-folders you can use another Folders to go deeper:

folder.Folders[2]

Folders returns a list of sub-folders, so to get the names of all the folders in the current directory, you can use a quick loop.

for i in range(folder.Count):
    print (folder[i].Name)

Each of the sub-folders has a .Items method to get a list of the emails.

Answer 4

You can see all live Outlook objects and their data in OutlookSpy.

MailItem object properties, methods and events are fully documented at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff861332.aspx

Answer 5

For attachments https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/outlook.attachment (see Properities)

attachment.FileName
attachment.Type
attachment.Position
attachment.BlockLevel
attachment.Class
attachment.DisplayName
attachment.Parent
attachment.Session
attachment.Size
attachment.Index
attachment.Application