Skip to main content

Importing a Outlook Express dbx file into Exchange using the EWS managed API and powershell

I recently switched to a new Laptop which had Windows7 which left me in a little bit of a hole as to how i could get access to some old email which i needed rather urgently that was located in a dbx file from a previous laptop where I had been using Outlook Express for a number of years. I found http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/convert_oe.htm which had a acceptable method of doing this but I thought I'd like to push this email into a Exchange Mailbox anyway so i decided to see if i could do this programmaticly.

Turns out there is no real API that makes access t0 DBX files easy however a few people over the years have come up with methods to access these files, there is a PHP dbxparser which someone has also ported to C# on code-project here this was enough information to allow me to build a simple DLL that i could then use in Powershell to extract email and then using some simple code to upload the email into Exchange using the MIMEContent upload technique with EWS. In the end the code worked fairly well i had to include some code to ignore NDR's which where causing some errors and because its not batched its a little slow but it did do the trick. I've put a download of the code I used and the DLL here for anybody that interested the script itself looks like this.

$dbxfile = "c:\temp\inbox.dbx"
$dllpath = "C:\temp\psdbxparser.dll"
$MailboxName = "mailbox@domain.com"

$casserverName = "exserver"
$userName = "username"
$password = "password"
$domain = "domain"

## Code From http://poshcode.org/624
## Create a compilation environment
$Provider=New-Object Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider
$Compiler=$Provider.CreateCompiler()
$Params=New-Object System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerParameters
$Params.GenerateExecutable=$False
$Params.GenerateInMemory=$True
$Params.IncludeDebugInformation=$False
$Params.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.DLL") | Out-Null

$TASource=@'
namespace Local.ToolkitExtensions.Net.CertificatePolicy{
public class TrustAll : System.Net.ICertificatePolicy {
public TrustAll() {
}
public bool CheckValidationResult(System.Net.ServicePoint sp,
System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate cert,
System.Net.WebRequest req, int problem) {
return true;
}
}
}
'@
$TAResults=$Provider.CompileAssemblyFromSource($Params,$TASource)
$TAAssembly=$TAResults.CompiledAssembly

## We now create an instance of the TrustAll and attach it to the ServicePointManager
$TrustAll=$TAAssembly.CreateInstance("Local.ToolkitExtensions.Net.CertificatePolicy.TrustAll")
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::CertificatePolicy=$TrustAll

## end code from http://poshcode.org/624

$dllpath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\1.0\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll"
[void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($dllpath)
$service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2007_SP1)
$uri=[system.URI] ("https://" + $casserverName + "/ews/exchange.asmx")
$service.Url = $uri
$service.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($username,$password,$domain)


$casuri = "https://" + $casserverName + "/ews/exchange.asmx"
$uri=[system.URI] $casuri
$service.Url = $uri

$folderid = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::Inbox,$MailboxName)
$TargetFolder = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderid)


[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($dllpath)
$dbx = new-object psdbxparser.DBX
$mcount = $dbx.Parse($dbxfile)
if ($mcount -gt 0){
for($iloop=0;$iloop -lt $mcount;$iloop++){
$msgString = $dbx.Extract($iloop)
$emUploadEmail = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.EmailMessage($service)
[byte[]]$bdBinaryData1 = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($msgString)
$emUploadEmail.MimeContent = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.MimeContent("us-ascii", $bdBinaryData1);
$PR_Flags = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExtendedPropertyDefinition(3591, [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.MapiPropertyType]::Integer);
$emUploadEmail.SetExtendedProperty($PR_Flags,"1")
if ($msgString.Indexof("message/delivery-status") -eq -1){
$emUploadEmail.Save($TargetFolder.id)
"Uploaded : " + $iloop
}


}

}
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

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 Gr...
Read more

Sending a MimeMessage via the Microsoft Graph using the Graph SDK, MimeKit and MSAL

One of the new features added to the Microsoft Graph recently was the ability to create and send Mime Messages (you have been able to get Message as Mime for a while). This is useful in a number of different scenarios especially when trying to create a Message with inline Images which has historically been hard to do with both the Graph and EWS (if you don't use MIME). It also opens up using SMIME for encryption and a more easy migration path for sending using SMTP in some apps. MimeKit is a great open source library for parsing and creating MIME messages so it offers a really easy solution for tackling this issue. The current documentation on Send message via MIME lacks any real sample so I've put together a quick console app that use MSAL, MIME kit and the Graph SDK to send a Message via MIME. As the current Graph SDK also doesn't support sending via MIME either there is a workaround for this in the future my guess is this will be supported.
Read more

Export calendar Items to a CSV file using Microsoft Graph and Powershell

For the last couple of years the most constantly popular post by number of views on this blog has been  Export calendar Items to a CSV file using EWS and Powershell closely followed by the contact exports scripts. It goes to show this is just a perennial issue that exists around Mail servers, I think the first VBS script I wrote to do this type of thing was late 90's against Exchange 5.5 using cdo 1.2. Now it's 2020 and if your running Office365 you should really be using the Microsoft Graph API to do this. So what I've done is create a PowerShell Module (and I made it a one file script for those that are more comfortable with that format) that's a port of the EWS script above that is so popular. This script uses the ADAL library for Modern Authentication (which if you grab the library from the PowerShell gallery will come down with the module). Most EWS properties map one to one with the Graph and the Graph actually provides better information on recurrences then...
Read more
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.