How to convert an MSG Outlook File to HTML String in Python

Outlook’s MSG format for emails is particularly troublesome to parse, potentially consisting of HTML, RTF, or plain text components. Then you have to consider attachments, images, and other possible issues, and you have yourself a real headache. With the help of an API, however, we can conveniently sidestep the whole problem and move on to more important things, like slacking off! Let’s begin.

First, we will install Cloudmersive’s API client for documents and format conversion.

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Once pip install is finished doing its thing, we are in a position to call our function:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint
# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
# Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed
# configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer'
# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ConvertDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/file' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.
body_only = true # bool | Optional; If true, the HTML string will only include the body of the MSG. Other information such as subject will still be given as properties in the response object. Default is false. (optional)
include_attachments = true # bool | Optional; If false, the response object will not include any attachment files from the input file. Default is true. (optional)
try:
# Convert Email MSG file to HTML string
api_response = api_instance.convert_document_msg_to_html(input_file, body_only=body_only, include_attachments=include_attachments)
pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
print("Exception when calling ConvertDocumentApi->convert_document_msg_to_html: %s\n" % e)

This function will take in our MSG file, as well as let you optionally specify if you want the sender, subject, etc to be included, and deal with attachments. Pretty good for five minutes of work.