Python and Outlook - Marking message thread as 'read'

Question

My company uses JIRA to track issues, and is set up to send an e-mail to all watchers and tagged users whenever an update is done on the issue. We also have some automation in place that will adjust fields on the issue (like sprint number) whenever it gets closed (this'll also send an e-mail). I also have a filter within Outlook that'll put any e-mail from JIRA into a separate subfolder 'JIRA'.

I often receive e-mails on issues that have been closed. I'm trying to write a small Python script that'll mark all these e-mails as read if the JIRA issue has been closed already. The basic idea is I can run this script once a week or so to clean up my mailbox.

I'm using the pywin32 and jira packages to do this, but I can't figure out how to change a message status. The fact that documentation is scarce doesn't help...

What I have:

import re
import textwrap

from jira import JIRA
import pandas as pd
import win32com.client

jira = JIRA("<JIRA URL>", None, ("<USER>", "<JIRA API key>"))
outlook = win32com.client.Dispatch("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace("MAPI")
wrapper = textwrap.TextWrapper(initial_indent="", width=100, subsequent_indent=" " * 4)
days_back = 10
start_time = pd.to_datetime("now").floor("D") - pd.to_timedelta(days_back, unit="D")
for message in outlook.getDefaultFolder(6).Folders.Item("JIRA").Items.Restrict(f"[ReceivedTime] >= '{start_time.strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M %p')}'"):
    if message.Unread:
        jira_issue = re.search("\[JIRA\] \([A-Z0-9-]+\)", str(message)).group().split()[1][1:-1]
        print(message, jira_issue)
        print(message.body)
        issue = jira.issue(jira_issue)
        status = issue.fields.status
        if status in ("Done", "Checked"):
            message.Unread = False

as noted in this SO issue. This doesn't seem to mark any e-mail as read.

Is this something I can even do in Python? If so, how? If not, what could be an alternative approach?

Answer 1

You can use Categories property to assign a red category to items in Outlook. Categories is a delimited string of category names that have been assigned to an Outlook item. This property uses the character specified in the value name, sList, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International in the Windows registry, as the delimiter for multiple categories. See Setting an Outlook mailitem's category programmatically? for more information.