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in reply to Re: is it possible to use Perl to process Outlook emails?
in thread is it possible to use Perl to process Outlook emails?

The plan is for the data to arrive in an Outlook mailbox, in the normal work email system (which is an Exchange server). I have experimented with using the Outlook in-built export functionality to get the data into Access but the entire email body ends up as a single field.

As they say I wouldn't have started here but that part of the system was agreed between the corporate IT department and the users before I got involved.

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Re^3: is it possible to use Perl to process Outlook emails?
by cjb (Friar) on Jul 26, 2011 at 14:08 UTC
    Your exchnage sever may have POP3 mail box access set up. If it has it's fairly easy to get Mail::POP3Client to grab the mail. I've had to do this recently: 
    #!c:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe

use Modern::Perl;
use Mail::POP3Client;
use MIME::QuotedPrint;

my $pop_user = 'XXXXXXXXXX';
my $pop_pass = 'XXXXXXXXXX';
my $pop_host = 'exchange3';

#connect to POP3 sever
my $pop = new Mail::POP3Client    ( HOST => $pop_host );
$pop->User($pop_user);
$pop->Pass($pop_pass);
$pop->Connect() 
    or die "Unable to connect to POP3 server: ".$pop->Message()."\n";

#count number of items in POP3 mailbox                                
my $mailcount = $pop->Count();

for (my $i = 1; $i <= $mailcount ; $i++) {
    my $header = $pop->Head($i); #gets the header
    my $uni = $pop->Uidl($i); # gets the unquie id
    my $body = $pop->Body($i);
    $body = decode_qp($body); #decode quoted printable body
    say "$uni";
    say "$header\n";
    say "$body";
}

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    Edit 27/07/2011@10:33BST Removed reference to subroutine not include in code &return_error and replaced with die
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      I tried to run this routine. The error message was: "unable to connect to POP3 server: couldn't connect socket exchange3, 110; Invalid argument." Any advise will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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        So you don't have a server named "exchange" ... what is the name of your server?
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Re^3: is it possible to use Perl to process Outlook emails?
by ~~David~~ (Hermit) on Jul 26, 2011 at 18:05 UTC
    Well, if you want a really backwards way to do it ( which is how I do it! ), i do it like the following:
    1. Set up a complex rule in Outlook so that when a message arrives, the following sequence occurs:
    a) Outlook can start up a program for you in the rule, i use it to start my perl program, which waits for:
    b) Run the following VB script to save the email to a local file, which your perl script is polling 
    Sub WriteEmailToFile(MyMail As MailItem)
    Dim myMailEntryID As String
    Dim myMailBody As String
    Dim outlookNameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace
    Dim outlookMail As Outlook.MailItem

    myMailEntryID = MyMail.EntryID
    Set outlookNameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set outlookMail = outlookNameSpace.GetItemFromID(myMailEntryID)
    
    Set fileSystemObject = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
     / you can create a dynamic text file name is you want...
    Set textFile = fileSystemObject.CreateTextFile("c:\temp\OutlookEma
+il.txt", True)
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMail.SenderEmailAddress)
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMail.SentOn)
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMail.Subject)
    
    outlookMailBody = outlookMail.Body
    
    'strip non-printing characters
    For x = 127 To 255
       While InStr(outlookMailBody, Chr(x)) > 0
          outlookMailBody = Replace(outlookMailBody, Chr(x), "")
       Wend
    Next x
    
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMailBody)
    textFile.Close
End Sub

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