# Email: extracting & displaying \*content\* of attachments
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 3, 2012, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271 "2012-08-03T09:26:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2012, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/1 "2012-08-03T09:26:10Z")
Something very specific I’d like to do, and I’d like to do exactly this (so never mind all the inevitable “why don’t you just [do something completely different]”):
I’d like to take a bunch of Outlook emails and somehow save or export them in bulk, to a single file
such that the _content_ of an attached file in each message is displayed side by side with the email header & body text.
The reason I’d like to do this is I receive hundreds of automatically generated emails from a certain news service, and each email provides a link to the news source – but only in the form of a very short, one line attachment. The link doesn’t appear in the body text, so if I want to see the source I have to go to each individual email and open the individual attachment.
But I’d like to do it in bulk for 100s of emails at once.
Possible?
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/2 "2012-08-03T09:36:28Z")
and thanks in advance, and hope I didn’t sound snarky
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### Author:  [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/3 "2012-08-03T09:36:38Z")
It’s certainly possible if you’re handy with programming. The [Outlook Object Model](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms268893(v=vs.100).aspx)should expose just about everything you need.
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### Author:  [@jdc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jdc)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2012, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/4 "2012-08-03T14:27:39Z")
I had a need to receive, send, and parse emails from within Access, and rather than figure out how to beat Outlook into submission, I just spent $78.40 for a single computer license for MailBee SMTP and MailBee POP3 components and it was a lot easier to write some VBA code using the examples they included.
This was in 2008 so prices may have changed, and I think I got a discount because the programming was for a non-profit. They did not have any problem with my installling the component on 2 computers, mine (for writing the application) and the one at the Church for actually running it
The company is afterlogic [www.afterlogic.com](http://www.afterlogic.com)
It looks like they only show the Developer License pricing on their website, but you might ask them if they still sell a “single computer” option.
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### Author:  [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/5 "2012-08-05T02:33:53Z")
As **DMC** said, this is likely possible with VBA or VBScript. A few questions, though:
Are all of these emails in a single folder? If not, is there an easy way to identify which ones to include?
What format do you want the output in - plain text, or in a Word doc with all the formatting preserved?
Are the attachments .txt files or something else?
When you say “side by side with the email header & body text”, would it be acceptable if the link appeared above or below the message?
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/6 "2012-08-05T02:55:08Z")
> [@Number](#):
>
> As **DMC** said, this is likely possible with VBA or VBScript. A few questions, though:
>
> Are all of these emails in a single folder? If not, is there an easy way to identify which ones to include?
>
> What format do you want the output in - plain text, or in a Word doc with all the formatting preserved?
>
> Are the attachments .txt files or something else?
>
> When you say “side by side with the email header & body text”, would it be acceptable if the link appeared above or below the message?
Hi, yes, they’re all in a single folder, and a plain text file is fine. Ideally I’d like one big text file containing the email subject lines and attachment text of everything in the folder; it doesn’t have to be formatted a certain way just as long as it’s consistent.
(After I have this text file in hand, I plan to copy and paste it to a Word file where I can run a macro to sort it out the way I want.)
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### Author:  [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/7 "2012-08-06T04:42:45Z")
Create a new Outlook macro named EmailExport, edit it, and paste in the text below. Customize the value of the **strOutput** variable on line 6 with the location of the output file to create.
When run, it will prompt for the folder to run against. It will then create a comma-delimited text file with the emails’ subjects and attachment contents. The .csv can be opened in Excel and should be easier to manipulate that way than in Word or Notepad.
```auto
Sub EmailExport()
Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2
Const TriStateUseDefault = -2
strOutput = "c:\output.csv"
strTempFile = Environ("TEMP") & "\EmailAttachment.txt"
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objOutput = objFSO.OpenTextFile( _
strOutput, ForWriting, True)
objOutput.WriteLine "Subject,Attachment Text"
Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set objFolder = objNS.PickFolder
For Each objItem In objFolder.Items
strAttachText = ""
If objItem.Class = olMail Then
If objItem.Attachments.Count > 0 Then
Set objAtt = objItem.Attachments(1)
If LCase(Right(objAtt.FileName, 4)) = ".txt" Then
objAtt.SaveAsFile strTempFile
Set objTempFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile( _
strTempFile, ForReading, False, TriStateUseDefault)
strAttachText = objTempFile.ReadAll
objTempFile.Close
objFSO.DeleteFile strTempFile, True
End If
End If
objOutput.WriteLine Chr(34) & objItem.Subject & Chr(34) & _
"," & Chr(34) & strAttachText & Chr(34)
End If
Next
objOutput.Close
MsgBox "Output written to " & strOutput
End Sub
```
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2012, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-extracting-displaying-content-of-attachments/630271/8 "2012-08-07T00:55:45Z")
**Number** , thank you so much! That’s _exactly_ what I was hoping for, and what you put together was past my own capabilities. I’m inspired to learn programming now!