python-oxmsg
Parse Outlook MSG (.msg) files to extract email messages and attachments.
The target use case is extracting Outlook message text and accessing attachments. There is no support for modifying messages or creating them from scratch. In addition to message text, other message properties such as sent-date, etc. are also accessible.
Documentation
Documentation for this project is on GitHub Pages.
Installation
pip install python-oxmsg
Occasionally it can be useful to install from a GitHub branch, perhaps to try out a version that has not yet been released. This command would install from the develop
branch:
pip install git+https://github.com/scanny/python-oxmsg@develop
Usage
>>> from oxmsg import Message
>>> msg = Message.load("message.msg")
>>> msg.message_class
'IPM.Note'
>>> msg.attachment_count
1
>>> attachment = msg.attachments[0]
>>> attachment.attached_by_value
True
>>> attachment.filename
'q1-objectives.pptx'
>>> attachment.mime_type
'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation'
>>> attachment.size
96407
>>> attachment.last_modified.isoformat()
'2023-11-18T16:08:17+00:00'
>>> with open(attachment.filename, "wb") as f:
... f.write(attachment.file_bytes)
CLI
python-oxmsg
includes a CLI that may be useful for diagnostic purposes.
$ oxmsg
Usage: oxmsg [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
Utility CLI for `python-oxmsg`.
Provides the subcommands listed below, useful for exploratory or diagnostic
purposes.
Options:
--help Show this message and exit.
Commands:
dump Write a summary of the MSG file's properties to stdout.
storage Summarize low-level "directories and files" structure of MSG...
The dump
sub-command displays all properties available in the message along with the
PID and PTYP information required to access those properties from a Properties
object.
$ oxmsg dump message.msg
------------------
Message Properties
------------------
header-properties
-----------------
recipient_count: 1
distinguished-properties
------------------------
attachment_count: 0
internet_code_page: utf-8
message_class: IPM.Note
sender: from@domain.com
...
other properties
-----------------------------------------+---------------+--------------------
property-id | type | value
-----------------------------------------+---------------+--------------------
0x0017 - PidTagImportance | PtypInteger32 | 00 00 00 01
0x001A - PidTagMessageClass | PtypString8 | 'IPM.Note'
0x0036 - PidTagSensitivity | PtypInteger32 | 00 00 00 00
0x0037 - PidTagSubject | PtypString8 | 'A test message'
0x003B - PidTagSentRepresentingSearchKey | PtypBinary | 21 bytes
0x003D - PidTagSubjectPrefix | PtypString8 | ''
0x0042 - PidTagSentRepresentingName | PtypString8 | 'from@domain.com'
...
Changelog
The release history including a chronicle of notable changes with each release is
recorded in CHANGELOG.md.