Scripts

Command-line scripts for use with born-digital archival materials.

export-email

export-email is a command-line script for exporting email content from binary, proprietary folder formats into individual email messages and attachment files, to allow individual email messages to be scrutinized and archived.

Currently, the only supported email format is Outlook Express 4.5 for Macintosh, but we expect to add support for other formats as we encounter them.pp

Example usage:

$ export-emails "Internet Mail" email-output

where Internet Mail is the directory that contains Outlook Express folders such as Inbox, Outbox, and Sent Mail, and email-output is a folder where the exported messages should be saved. On our hardware, the Outlook Express directory structure looks like this:

Internet
+- Internet Applications
   +- Outlook Express 4.5 Folder
      +- OE User(s)
         +- Account Name 1
         |  +- Internet Mail
         |     +- Deleted Messages
         |     +- Drafts
         |     +- Inbox
         |     +- Outbox
         |     +- Sent Mail
         +- Account Name 2
         |  +- Internet Mail
         |     +- Deleted Messages
         |     +- Drafts
         |     +- Inbox
         |     +- Outbox
         |     +- Sent Mail

If you with to export email messages for multiple accounts, you will need to run export-email once for each account, giving it the appropriate Internet Mail folder name.

output

As it runs, export-email will report on the Mail folders it identifies, the number of messages expected and the number of messages and attachments exported.

The script generates individual text files for email messages in each folder. The generated filenames include the folder name, message date, who the message was from (or who the message was sent to for the Sent Mail folder), and the subject. If an email message includes attachments with a filename, export-email will create a file in a _parts directory matching the output file name for the email message.

Note

In some cases, the folder Index file may reference deleted messages; these are currently skipped for output, but if any are found, a count of skipped deleted messages will be reported when the script runs. In some cases, there may also be content sections in the Mail data file which are not referenced by the folder Index (i.e., when the index and data files were not completely synchronized); these cannot exported, but a summary of the number of skipped sections is included in the script output in case further investigation is needed.