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how to access email subfolders? [duplicate]

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I am looking for a method of reading emails using Pop3 in C# 2.0. Currently, I am using code found in CodeProject. However, this solution is less than ideal. The biggest problem is that it doesn't support emails written in unicode.

I've successfully used OpenPop.NET to access emails via POP3.

downloading the email via the POP3 protocol is the easy part of the task. The protocol is quite simple and the only hard part could be advanced authentication methods if you don't want to send a clear text password over the network (and cannot use the SSL encrypted communication channel). See RFC 1939: Post Office Protocol - Version 3
and RFC 1734: POP3 AUTHentication command for details.
The hard part comes when you have to parse the received email, which means parsing MIME format in most cases. You can write quick&dirty MIME parser in a few hours or days and it will handle 95+% of all incoming messages. Improving the parser so it can parse almost any email means:
getting email samples sent from the most popular mail clients and improve the parser in order to fix errors and RFC misinterpretations generated by them.
Making sure that messages violating RFC for message headers and content will not crash your parser and that you will be able to read every readable or guessable value from the mangled email
correct handling of internationalization issues (e.g. languages written from righ to left, correct encoding for specific language etc)
UNICODE
Attachments and hierarchical message item tree as seen in "Mime torture email sample"
S/MIME (signed and encrypted emails).
and so on
Debugging a robust MIME parser takes months of work. I know, because I was watching my friend writing one such parser for the component mentioned below and was writing a few unit tests for it too ;-)
Back to the original question.
Following code taken from our POP3 Tutorial page and links would help you:
//
// create client, connect and log in
Pop3 client = new Pop3();
client.Connect("pop3.example.org");
client.Login("username", "password");
// get message list
Pop3MessageCollection list = client.GetMessageList();
if (list.Count == 0)
{
Console.WriteLine("There are no messages in the mailbox.");
}
else
{
// download the first message
MailMessage message = client.GetMailMessage(list[0].SequenceNumber);
...
}
client.Disconnect();
HOWTO: Download emails from a GMail account in C# (blogpost)
Rebex Mail for .NET (POP3/IMAP client component for .NET)
Rebex Secure Mail for .NET (POP3/IMAP client component for .NET - SSL enabled)

My open source application BugTracker.NET includes a POP3 client that can parse MIME. Both the POP3 code and the MIME code are from other authors, but you can see how it all fits together in my app.
For the MIME parsing, I use http://anmar.eu.org/projects/sharpmimetools/.
See the file POP3Main.cs, POP3Client.cs, and insert_bug.aspx

You can also try Mail.dll mail component, it has SSL support, unicode, and multi-national email support:
using(Pop3 pop3 = new Pop3())
{
pop3.Connect("mail.host.com"); // Connect to server and login
pop3.Login("user", "password");
foreach(string uid in pop3.GetAll())
{
IMail email = new MailBuilder()
.CreateFromEml(pop3.GetMessageByUID(uid));
Console.WriteLine( email.Subject );
}
pop3.Close(false);
}
You can download it here at https://www.limilabs.com/mail
Please note that this is a commercial product I've created.

call me old fashion but why use a 3rd party library for a simple protocol. I've implemented POP3 readers in web based ASP.NET application with System.Net.Sockets.TCPClient and System.Net.Security.SslStream for the encryption and authentication. As far as protocols go, once you open up communication with the POP3 server, there are only a handful of commands that you have to deal with. It is a very easy protocol to work with.

I wouldn't recommend OpenPOP. I just spent a few hours debugging an issue - OpenPOP's POPClient.GetMessage() was mysteriously returning null. I debugged this and found it was a string index bug - see the patch I submitted here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2833334&group_id=92166&atid=599778. It was difficult to find the cause since there are empty catch{} blocks that swallow exceptions.
Also, the project is mostly dormant... the last release was in 2004.
For now we're still using OpenPOP, but I'll take a look at some of the other projects people have recommended here.

HigLabo.Mail is easy to use. Here is a sample usage:
using (Pop3Client cl = new Pop3Client())
{
cl.UserName = "MyUserName";
cl.Password = "MyPassword";
cl.ServerName = "MyServer";
cl.AuthenticateMode = Pop3AuthenticateMode.Pop;
cl.Ssl = false;
cl.Authenticate();
///Get first mail of my mailbox
Pop3Message mg = cl.GetMessage(1);
String MyText = mg.BodyText;
///If the message have one attachment
Pop3Content ct = mg.Contents[0];
///you can save it to local disk
ct.DecodeData("your file path");
}
you can get it from https://github.com/higty/higlabo or Nuget [HigLabo]

I just tried SMTPop and it worked.
I downloaded this.
Added smtpop.dll reference to my C# .NET project
Wrote the following code:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using SmtPop;
namespace SMT_POP3 {
class Program {
static void Main(string[] args) {
SmtPop.POP3Client pop = new SmtPop.POP3Client();
pop.Open("<hostURL>", 110, "<username>", "<password>");
// Get message list from POP server
SmtPop.POPMessageId[] messages = pop.GetMailList();
if (messages != null) {
// Walk attachment list
foreach(SmtPop.POPMessageId id in messages) {
SmtPop.POPReader reader= pop.GetMailReader(id);
SmtPop.MimeMessage msg = new SmtPop.MimeMessage();
// Read message
msg.Read(reader);
if (msg.AddressFrom != null) {
String from= msg.AddressFrom[0].Name;
Console.WriteLine("from: " + from);
}
if (msg.Subject != null) {
String subject = msg.Subject;
Console.WriteLine("subject: "+ subject);
}
if (msg.Body != null) {
String body = msg.Body;
Console.WriteLine("body: " + body);
}
if (msg.Attachments != null && false) {
// Do something with first attachment
SmtPop.MimeAttachment attach = msg.Attachments[0];
if (attach.Filename == "data") {
// Read data from attachment
Byte[] b = Convert.FromBase64String(attach.Body);
System.IO.MemoryStream mem = new System.IO.MemoryStream(b, false);
//BinaryFormatter f = new BinaryFormatter();
// DataClass data= (DataClass)f.Deserialize(mem);
mem.Close();
}
// Delete message
// pop.Dele(id.Id);
}
}
}
pop.Quit();
}
}
}

Saving an email to a .MSG file using EWS Managed API

My current project runs a service on a Microsoft Exchange 2010-based email address, dedicated to apply custom rules to incoming emails.
As I am browsing through the possible C#-based solutions, EWS managed API seems like the best API to use for me. Every email action I need was found, but there is one extremely big one missing... Saving an email to a .msg file. Which is quite surprising to me given how easy of an action it is from Outlook (simply drag and drop from Outlook to any folder).
This is an absolute requirement as users keep their emails organized through drag and drop. Is there any way I've missed to do that with EWS? So far I've only found two non-EWS ways :
Using a third-party library which I am not sure we can afford (IndependentSoft)
Using a more complex method with MessageSave and outlook rules to execute a custom action (action being "run MessageSave" )
I am quite surprised that such a basic action requires so much work and would like to know, is there any easy way to save an email to a .msg file ?
Worst case scenario, is there a non-EWS API, C# based method to do so?
Thank you
Edit:
I have explored the .eml export solution. The issue is we use Outlook 2007, which does not support eml format. .msg is pretty much the requirement here

.msg is a format, which only outlook itself uses, not the exchange server you are communicating with.
For that matter, a .eml file can be created quite easily.
See here, how you can do it.

There is a non-EWS API, C# based method to do exactly what your looking for:
http://www.independentsoft.de/exchangewebservices/tutorial/downloadmessagetomsgfile.html
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using Independentsoft.Exchange;
namespace Sample
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
NetworkCredential credential = new NetworkCredential("username", "password");
Service service = new Service("https://myserver3/ews/Exchange.asmx", credential);
try
{
ItemShape itemShape = new ItemShape(ShapeType.Id);
FindItemResponse inboxItems = service.FindItem(StandardFolder.Inbox, itemShape);
for (int i = 0; i < inboxItems.Items.Count; i++)
{
Independentsoft.Msg.Message msgFile = service.GetMessageFile(inboxItems.Items[i].ItemId);
msgFile.Save("c:\\test\\message" + i + ".msg", true);
}
}
catch (ServiceRequestException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message);
Console.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.XmlMessage);
Console.Read();
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message);
Console.Read();
}
}
}
}
It offers a feature to save messages and other items as Outlook .msg files.

Sending emails with signatures via C#

I have a the following setup to send emails from my c# Application :
SmtpClient (under System.Net.Mail namespace) to do the actual sending once everything is in place and set the 'IsBodyHtml' property of the Message object to True
Using the dll from Sautinsoft I convert a simple rtf file which contains the formatting of the email and convert it to a HTML string which I then use as the body of the mail.
It works great just as it is and I have sent a few test emails to myself and all the appropriate formatting is retained. However i am having a problem with images - The dll converts images to a img tag and uses the base 64 format of the image as the data source, this works fine if you view it as a html page, but sending it as the body of you email produces problems. Email clients such as Yahoo don't mind embedded images but Gmail does not play nice with this methodology. The only image that should appear in the emails I'm sending is the signature image located at the bottom of each email. Using signatures in the native Gmail client in your browser poses no problems since the image has a link to a actual file on a server somewhere, but sending emails with signatures via a C# Application seems to be a different story. Any suggestions?
Thank you for your time.

You may consider automating Outlook from a C# application. See How to automate Outlook and Word by using Visual C# .NET to create a pre-populated e-mail message that can be edited. Also you can find a sample code - C# app automates Outlook (CSAutomateOutlook).

If you are talking about RTF2HTML, you may add any images in a separate folder (no include in body of HTML):
string inpFile = #"..\..\..\..\example.docx";
string outFile = Path.GetFullPath(#"Result2.html");
string imgDir = Path.GetDirectoryName(outFile);
RtfToHtml r = new RtfToHtml();
// Set images directory
HtmlFixedSaveOptions opt = new HtmlFixedSaveOptions()
{
ImagesDirectoryPath = Path.Combine(imgDir, "Result_images"),
ImagesDirectorySrcPath = "Result_images",
// Change to store images as physical files on local drive.
EmbedImages = false
};
try
{
r.Convert(inpFile, outFile, opt);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine($"Conversion failed! {ex.Message}");
}
As the result you will see HTML file with linked images in folder.

C# Create MIME Message?

Is there any built in functionality to MIME a file in C# .Net? What I am looking to do is:
Convert a file into a MIME message
Sign the MIME Message to a pcks 7 blob
MIME that pkcs 7 blob
Finally encrypt the entire thing.
Any suggestions on how I would go about this (not the encryption or signing part but the MIMEing)? What exactly is envolved in MIMEing a file?

There is a good commercial package for a small fee:
Mime4Net

Rather than deal with third party libraries, I suggest you look to the core .NET library. Use the Attachment class; it's been around since .NET 2.

As far as I know there is no such support in the bare .NET. You have to try one of third party libraries. One of them is our Rebex Secure Mail for .NET. Following code shows how to achieve it:
using Rebex.Mail;
using Rebex.Mime.Headers;
using Rebex.Security.Certificates;
...
// load the sender's certificate and
// associated private key from a file
Certificate signer = Certificate.LoadPfx("hugo.pfx", "password");
// load the recipient's certificate
Certificate recipient = Certificate.LoadDer("joe.cer");
// create an instance of MailMessage
MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
// set its properties to desired values
message.From = "hugo#example.com";
message.To = "joe#example.com";
message.Subject = "This is a simple message";
message.BodyText = "Hello, Joe!";
message.BodyHtml = "Hello, <b>Joe</b>!";
// sign the message using Hugo's certificate
message.Sign(signer);
// and encrypt it using Joe's certificate
message.Encrypt(recipient);
// if you wanted Hugo to be able to read the message later as well,
// you can encrypt it for Hugo as well instead - comment out the previous
// encrypt and uncomment this one:
// message.Encrypt(recipient, signer)
(Code taken from the S/MIME tutorial page)

Something that hasn't been mentioned is MimeKit.
It does everything that you need it to do.
(this is still a top hit in google so thought I'd add this gem)

Read from .msg files [closed]

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Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I need to read from Outlook .MSG file in .NET without using COM API for Outlook (cos it will not be installed on the machines that my app will run). Are there any free 3rd party libraries to do that? I want to extract From, To, CC and BCC fields. Sent/Receive date fields would be good if they are also stored in MSG files.

There is code avaliable on CodeProject for reading .msg files without COM. See here.

Update: I have found a 3rd party COM library called Outlook Redemption which is working fine for me at the moment. If you use it via COM-Interop in .NET, don't forget to release every COM object after you are done with it, otherwise your application crashes randomly.

Here's some sample VBA code using Outlook Redemption that Huseyint found.
Public Sub ProcessMail()
Dim Sess As RDOSession
Dim myMsg As RDOMail
Dim myString As String
Set Sess = CreateObject("Redemption.RDOSession")
Set myMsg = Sess.GetMessageFromMsgFile("C:\TestHarness\kmail.msg")
myString = myMsg.Body
myMsg.Body = Replace(myString, "8750", "XXXX")
myMsg.Save
End Sub

Microsoft has documented this: .MSG File Format Specification

It's a "Structured Storage" document. I've successfully used Andrew Peace's code to read these in the past, even under .NET (using C++/CLI) - it's clean and fairly easy to understand. Basically, you need to figure out which records you need, and query for those - it gets a little bit hairy, since different versions of Outlook and different types of messages will result in different records...

You can try our (commercial) Rebex Secure Mail library. It can read Outlooks MSG format. Following code shows how:
// Load message
MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
message.Load(#"c:\Temp\t\message.msg");
// show From, To and Sent date
Console.WriteLine("From: {0}", message.From);
Console.WriteLine("To: {0}", message.To);
Console.WriteLine("Sent: {0}", message.Date.LocalTime);
// find and try to parse the first 'Received' header
MailDateTime receivedDate = null;
string received = message.Headers.GetRaw("Received");
if (received != null)
{
int lastSemicolon = received.LastIndexOf(';');
if (lastSemicolon >= 0)
{
string rawDate = received.Substring(lastSemicolon + 1);
MimeHeader header = new MimeHeader("Date", rawDate);
receivedDate = header.Value as MailDateTime;
}
}
// display the received date if available
if (receivedDate != null)
Console.WriteLine("Received: {0}", receivedDate.LocalTime);
More info on Sent and Received dates and how are they represented in the message can be found at http://forum.rebex.net/questions/816/extract-senttime-receivetime-and-time-zones

If you open the .MSG file in a text editor, i believe you will find that the information you are after is stored as plain text inside the file. (It is on all the messages i have checked at least)
It would be pretty easy to write some code to parse the file looking for lines beginning with "From:" or "To:" etc. and then extracting the information you need.
If you need the body of the email as well, that may be a bit more complicated.