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Outlook .MSG FileOpen FileRead - Getting strange symbols


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Howdy Everyone!

I've been scouring the forum for something that works... and no dice yet... hoping to stop the frustration - hope someone in the forum knows what to do.

Basically, I've saved .msg files out of MS Outlook and want to scan each on for email addresses but all I get with fileopen and fileread are symbols... ran through every iteration.

I've seen people do some soft of binary extract and binarytostring but I haven't gotten that to work either... not sure what's going on.

Neither of these have worked for me... yes I know they are old and FileOpen has changed... but like I said I tried everything that I know of.

Please help :)
 

$sFile = "C:\temp\messages\Test.msg"
$hFile = FileOpen($sFile, 16) ; 16 = binary
$binData = FileRead($hFile, 1024) ; read first 1KB
FileClose($hFile)
ConsoleWrite("Debug: First 1KB = " & $binData & @LF)

or...

$sFile = "C:\temp\messages\Test.msg"
$hFile = FileOpen($sFile, 16)
$binData = FileRead($hFile, 20480)
FileClose($hFile)
$startdef=StringTrimLeft(Binary('thetextIamlookingfor'), 20)
$enddef=StringTrimLeft(Binary('moretextIamlookingfor'), 20)
$binData=StringTrimLeft($binData, StringInStr($binData, $startdef)+StringLen($startdef)-1)
$binData=StringLeft($binData, StringInStr($binData, $enddef)-1)
ConsoleWrite(BinaryToString('0x'&$binData) & @LF)

Thanks!

"Maybe I'm on a road that ain't been paved yet. And maybe I see a sign that ain't been made yet"
Song Title: I guess you could say
Artist: Middle Class Rut

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If you still have Outlook installed you could use my OutlookEX UDF to open the msg files and extract the needed data.

My UDFs and Tutorials:

Spoiler

UDFs:
Active Directory (NEW 2024-07-28 - Version 1.6.3.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts - Wiki
ExcelChart (2017-07-21 - Version 0.4.0.1) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts
OutlookEX (2021-11-16 - Version 1.7.0.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts - Wiki
OutlookEX_GUI (2021-04-13 - Version 1.4.0.0) - Download
Outlook Tools (2019-07-22 - Version 0.6.0.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Wiki
PowerPoint (2021-08-31 - Version 1.5.0.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts - Wiki
Task Scheduler (2022-07-28 - Version 1.6.0.1) - Download - General Help & Support - Wiki

Standard UDFs:
Excel - Example Scripts - Wiki
Word - Wiki

Tutorials:
ADO - Wiki
WebDriver - Wiki

 

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Is it normal EML ?

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"Program are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers and execute" - Donald Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming"
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Anticipating Errors :  "Any program that accepts data from a user must include code to validate that data before sending it to the data store. You cannot rely on the data store, ...., or even your programming language to notify you of problems. You must check every byte entered by your users, making sure that data is the correct type for its field and that required fields are not empty."

Signature last update: 2023-04-24

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I do not know the data structure of a saved msg.
I know that with the OutlookEX UDF it should be easy to extract the information you need.

My UDFs and Tutorials:

Spoiler

UDFs:
Active Directory (NEW 2024-07-28 - Version 1.6.3.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts - Wiki
ExcelChart (2017-07-21 - Version 0.4.0.1) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts
OutlookEX (2021-11-16 - Version 1.7.0.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts - Wiki
OutlookEX_GUI (2021-04-13 - Version 1.4.0.0) - Download
Outlook Tools (2019-07-22 - Version 0.6.0.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Wiki
PowerPoint (2021-08-31 - Version 1.5.0.0) - Download - General Help & Support - Example Scripts - Wiki
Task Scheduler (2022-07-28 - Version 1.6.0.1) - Download - General Help & Support - Wiki

Standard UDFs:
Excel - Example Scripts - Wiki
Word - Wiki

Tutorials:
ADO - Wiki
WebDriver - Wiki

 

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mLipok - Not sure what you mean by that... I believe it is... I just copied it out of Outlook and into a temporary directory. Sorry, but how would I determine that?

Edited by souldjer777

"Maybe I'm on a road that ain't been paved yet. And maybe I see a sign that ain't been made yet"
Song Title: I guess you could say
Artist: Middle Class Rut

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Kind of the same issue I had trying to open an odd file type a while back, do not think I ever figured out how to quite do it even after trying ever file open option and all the binary/string conversions.

For this in particular I was able to use Notepad++ and while the majority of it is just "gibberish" there are email address inside that I could easily search via RegEx

\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b

Notepad++ is free if Outlook is not an option. 

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Open this file as text in notepad or any other editor.

If you see something like this

Return-Path: <some@email.pl>
X-Original-To: my@email.com
Received: from localhost (unknown [127.0.0.1])
    by my.email.server.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E13951926130
    for <my@email.com>; Sat, 19 Dec 2015 18:23:33 +0100 (CET)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at my.email.server.com
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: -3.307
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.307 tagged_above=-100 required=7

I suppose this is EML format.

 

Signature beginning:
Please remember: "AutoIt"..... *  Wondering who uses AutoIt and what it can be used for ? * Forum Rules *
ADO.au3 UDF * POP3.au3 UDF * XML.au3 UDF * IE on Windows 11 * How to ask ChatGPT for AutoIt Codefor other useful stuff click the following button:

Spoiler

Any of my own code posted anywhere on the forum is available for use by others without any restriction of any kind. 

My contribution (my own projects): * Debenu Quick PDF Library - UDF * Debenu PDF Viewer SDK - UDF * Acrobat Reader - ActiveX Viewer * UDF for PDFCreator v1.x.x * XZip - UDF * AppCompatFlags UDF * CrowdinAPI UDF * _WinMergeCompare2Files() * _JavaExceptionAdd() * _IsBeta() * Writing DPI Awareness App - workaround * _AutoIt_RequiredVersion() * Chilkatsoft.au3 UDF * TeamViewer.au3 UDF * JavaManagement UDF * VIES over SOAP * WinSCP UDF * GHAPI UDF - modest begining - comunication with GitHub REST APIErrorLog.au3 UDF - A logging Library * Include Dependency Tree (Tool for analyzing script relations) * Show_Macro_Values.au3 *

 

My contribution to others projects or UDF based on  others projects: * _sql.au3 UDF  * POP3.au3 UDF *  RTF Printer - UDF * XML.au3 UDF * ADO.au3 UDF SMTP Mailer UDF * Dual Monitor resolution detection * * 2GUI on Dual Monitor System * _SciLexer.au3 UDF * SciTE - Lexer for console pane

Useful links: * Forum Rules * Forum etiquette *  Forum Information and FAQs * How to post code on the forum * AutoIt Online Documentation * AutoIt Online Beta Documentation * SciTE4AutoIt3 getting started * Convert text blocks to AutoIt code * Games made in Autoit * Programming related sites * Polish AutoIt Tutorial * DllCall Code Generator * 

Wiki: Expand your knowledge - AutoIt Wiki * Collection of User Defined Functions * How to use HelpFile * Good coding practices in AutoIt * 

OpenOffice/LibreOffice/XLS Related: WriterDemo.au3 * XLS/MDB from scratch with ADOX

IE Related:  * How to use IE.au3  UDF with  AutoIt v3.3.14.x * Why isn't Autoit able to click a Javascript Dialog? * Clicking javascript button with no ID * IE document >> save as MHT file * IETab Switcher (by LarsJ ) * HTML Entities * _IEquerySelectorAll() (by uncommon) * IE in TaskSchedulerIE Embedded Control Versioning (use IE9+ and HTML5 in a GUI) * PDF Related:How to get reference to PDF object embeded in IE * IE on Windows 11

I encourage you to read: * Global Vars * Best Coding Practices * Please explain code used in Help file for several File functions * OOP-like approach in AutoIt * UDF-Spec Questions *  EXAMPLE: How To Catch ConsoleWrite() output to a file or to CMD *

I also encourage you to check awesome @trancexx code:  * Create COM objects from modules without any demand on user to register anything. * Another COM object registering stuffOnHungApp handlerAvoid "AutoIt Error" message box in unknown errors  * HTML editor

winhttp.au3 related : * https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/206771-winhttpau3-download-problem-youre-speaking-plain-http-to-an-ssl-enabled-server-port/

"Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto" - Publius Terentius Afer
"Program are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers and execute" - Donald Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming"
:naughty:  :ranting:, be  :) and       \\//_.

Anticipating Errors :  "Any program that accepts data from a user must include code to validate that data before sending it to the data store. You cannot rely on the data store, ...., or even your programming language to notify you of problems. You must check every byte entered by your users, making sure that data is the correct type for its field and that required fields are not empty."

Signature last update: 2023-04-24

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I think all, if not all then most, Microsoft Office programs save their files as just .zip files renamed to the extension of the program.

What I mean is, if you create a .docx, .xmls, or .pptx file, add some information to it, then rename it to .zip you will find some archived folders and files. There was a post on here where someone did a StringRegExpReplace (I think it was this) to extract the data. Alternatively you could just unzip it into the temp direction, find the file with the email address, and then clean up your resources. I don't have outlook so I can't test it myself.

This was the post.

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Holy crap were you right about the zipping... just did right click 7zip > extract - can see all the info.

So out of the 75 files or so... WOW... I can get everything I need lol - sadly that worked kinda B)

Edited by souldjer777

"Maybe I'm on a road that ain't been paved yet. And maybe I see a sign that ain't been made yet"
Song Title: I guess you could say
Artist: Middle Class Rut

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Share on other sites

Holy crap were you right about the zipping... just did right click 7zip > extract - can see all the info.

So out of the 75 files or so... WOW... I can get everything I need lol - sadly that worked kinda B)

Most of it's just xml formatting and settings. In a word .docx the actual document text is stored in ..\word\document.xml

Just gotta find the right xml file with the info you need. GL on your hunt!

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