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 for this project is on GitHub Pages.
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
>>> 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 # -- attachment bytes only available when True -- True >>> attachment.file_name '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.file_name, "wb") as f: ... f.write(attachment.file_bytes)
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: [email protected] ... 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 | '[email protected]' ...
The release history including a chronicle of notable changes with each release is recorded in CHANGELOG.md.