Parse the body of attachment in outlook mail with MAPI Python

Question

I am using win32com for parsing emails in my outlook, how can I parse the contents of attachment in mail.

outlook = win32com.client.Dispatch("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace("MAPI")
accounts= win32com.client.Dispatch("Outlook.Application").Session.Accounts
inbox = outlook.Folders(accounts['<Account-Name>'].DeliveryStore.DisplayName)
messages = inbox.Folders['Inbox'].Items
if len(messages) > 0:
   for message2 in messages:
       title = message2.Subject
       if title == '<Title-of-mail>':
          attachment = message2.Attachments.Item(1)
          print(attachment)
          print(message2.Body)
          # print(attachment.Body) //Error

I want to get the contents of attachment, not able to find any proper documentation for this. Any help in guiding me to correct direction is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Firstly, you might want to retrieve the Inbox using

accounts['<Account-Name>'].DeliveryStore.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)

Secondly, looping through all messages in a folder is a terrible idea - use Items.Find/FindNext or Items.Restrict with a restriction on the Subject property..

Thirdly, Outlook would not let you directly access attachment contents, you would need to save the attachment as a file (Attachment.SaveAsFile), and then read the file contents. If you want to access attachment contents directly, you can use Redemption (I am its author) - it exposes Attachment / RDOAttachment.AsText / AsArray / AsStream properties.