Skip to main content

Copying email from the Inbox to eml files on the file system

Somebody asked how to copy email from a mailbox or public folder to the file system using WebDAV. One way of doing this is to grab the email as stream using a WebDAV get as illustrated in the Exchange SDK here
Once you have the email as a stream you can then use an ADO stream object's savetofile method to save it as an eml file. If you combine that with a webdav search you can then select all the emails in a certain folder and export this to a folder on the file system. The following example exports all the mail in a inbox to a folder on the c: drive called exp. I've posted a downloadable copy of this code here.

server = "servername"
mailbox = "mailbox"
set fso = createobject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strURL = "http://" & server & "/exchange/" & mailbox & "/inbox/"
strURL1 = "http://" & server & "/exchange/" & mailbox & "/sent items/"
strQuery = ""
strQuery = strQuery & "SELECT ""DAV:displayname"", ""urn:schemas:httpmail:subject"""
strQuery = strQuery & " FROM scope('shallow traversal of """
strQuery = strQuery & strURL & """') Where ""DAV:ishidden"" = False AND ""DAV:isfolder"" = False AND "
strQuery = strQuery & """DAV:contentclass"" = 'urn:content-classes:message'
"
set req = createobject("microsoft.xmlhttp")
req.open "SEARCH", strURL, false
req.setrequestheader "Content-Type", "text/xml"
rem req.setrequestheader "Range", "rows=0-100"
req.setRequestHeader "Translate","f"
req.send strQuery
If req.status >= 500 Then
ElseIf req.status = 207 Then
set oResponseDoc = req.responseXML
set oNodeList = oResponseDoc.getElementsByTagName("a:displayname")
set oNodeList1 = oResponseDoc.getElementsByTagName("a:href")
For i = 0 To (oNodeList.length -1)
set oNode = oNodeList.nextNode
set oNode1 = oNodeList1.nextNode
df = expmail(oNode.Text,oNode1.text)
Next
Else
End If

function expmail(displayname,href)
req.open "GET", href, false
req.setRequestHeader "Translate","f"
req.send
fname = replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(displayname,":","-"),"\",""),"/",""),"?",""),chr(34),"")
fname = replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(fname,"<",""),">",""),chr(11),""),"*",""),"|",""),"(","")
fname = replace(replace(replace(fname,")",""),chr(12),""),chr(15),"")
fname = "c:\exp\" & fname
wscript.echo fname
set stm = createobject("ADODB.Stream")
stm.open
msgstring = req.responsetext
stm.type = 2
stm.Charset = "x-ansi"
stm.writetext msgstring,0
stm.Position = 0
stm.type = 1
stm.savetofile fname
set stm = nothing

end function

Popular posts from this blog

Testing and Sending email via SMTP using Opportunistic TLS and oAuth in Office365 with PowerShell

As well as EWS and Remote PowerShell (RPS) other mail protocols POP3, IMAP and SMTP have had OAuth authentication enabled in Exchange Online (Official announcement here ). A while ago I created  this script that used Opportunistic TLS to perform a Telnet style test against a SMTP server using SMTP AUTH. Now that oAuth authentication has been enabled in office365 I've updated this script to be able to use oAuth instead of SMTP Auth to test against Office365. I've also included a function to actually send a Message. Token Acquisition  To Send a Mail using oAuth you first need to get an Access token from Azure AD there are plenty of ways of doing this in PowerShell. You could use a library like MSAL or ADAL (just google your favoured method) or use a library less approach which I've included with this script . Whatever way you do this you need to make sure that your application registration  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/quickstart-register-

How to test SMTP using Opportunistic TLS with Powershell and grab the public certificate a SMTP server is using

Most email services these day employ Opportunistic TLS when trying to send Messages which means that wherever possible the Messages will be encrypted rather then the plain text legacy of SMTP.  This method was defined in RFC 3207 "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security" and  there's a quite a good explanation of Opportunistic TLS on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS .  This is used for both Server to Server (eg MTA to MTA) and Client to server (Eg a Message client like Outlook which acts as a MSA) the later being generally Authenticated. Basically it allows you to have a normal plain text SMTP conversation that is then upgraded to TLS using the STARTTLS verb. Not all servers will support this verb so if its not supported then a message is just sent as Plain text. TLS relies on PKI certificates and the administrative issue s that come around certificate management like expired certificates which is why I wrote th

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Graph is limited to a m
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.