Reading Microsoft Outlook Express .dbx files

[Steve Holden]

[posted and mailed]

The timbot wrote, in its wisdom:


> [posted & mailed]
>
> [Steve Holden]
> > In my trek through the various mail packages the Windoze user may be
> > confronted with I am currently battling with Outlook Express.
> > It's actually rather better than I feared.
>
> Hint:  The undocumented Ctrl+F3 brings up a box with the actual raw email,
> headers and MIME separators and all (only in OE; Outlook doesn't support
> this, and AFAICT Outlook doesn't even save the original stream).
>
> > Its native folder format appears to be a ".dbx" file, about which
> > I have no information.
>
> Also undocumented.
>
> > Does any reader have experience with either reading these files, or
> > automating OEx to provide them to a Python program in RFC822-style
> > formats?
>
> Check out this pragmatic reverse-engineering:
>
>     http://sourceforge.net/projects/mbx2mbox/
>
>     Converts Outlook .mbx and .dbx files into standard RFC822
>     mail files.  Mailboxes from newer versions of Outlook and
>     Outlook express may not be supported.
>
> If you ever have to deal with Outlook .pst format, though, that's black
> magic at a whole 'nother level, using both undocumented compression and
> undocumented encryption schemes.  Never found anything that understands
> .pst.  Best way to convert Outlook msgs to std form I ever found was to
> *mail* Outlook msgs, as attachments, from Outlook to a Unixish client, and
> pick them apart on the receiving end.
>
> no-actual-need-to-break-the-code-ly y'rs  - tim
>
Thanks for your advice. Since I'm using a fairly recent edition of OE
(5.50.4133.2400) I suspect there'll be problems, but at the very worst I can
pick the mbx2mbox code apart (blerch: Perl!) and recast it in Python, if I'm
capable, updating as I go along. It will at least have some ideas in it,
whic puts me further down the orad than I am now.

The problem with the usual techniques of saving as text, and some mailing
solutions, is that attachments are frequently ignored. I overcame the
inability to deal with .pst files by importing from Outlook to OE. I also
imported my Netscape mail, though I had already managed to deal with that in
Python.

all-my-eggs-now-firmly-in-one-basket-ly y'rs  - steve