Connect to Exchange mailbox with Python [closed]

Question

I need to connect to an Exchange mailbox in a Python script, without using any profile setup on the local machine (including using Outlook). If I use win32com to create a MAPI.Session I could logon (with the Logon() method) with an existing profile, but I want to just provide a username & password.

Is this possible? If so, could someone provide example code? I would prefer if it only used the standard library and the pywin32 package. Unfortunately, enabling IMAP access for the Exchange server (and then using imaplib) is not possible.

In case it is necessary: all the script will be doing is connecting to the mailbox, and running through the messages in the Inbox, retrieving the contents. I can handle writing the code for that, if I can get a connection in the first place!

To clarify regarding Outlook: Outlook will be installed on the local machine, but it does not have any accounts setup (i.e. all the appropriate libraries will be available, but I need to operate independently from anything setup inside of Outlook).

Answer 1

I know this is an old thread, but...

If you're using Exchange 2007 or newer, or Office365, take a look at Exchange Web Services. It's a pretty comprehensive SOAP-based interface for Exchange, and you can do pretty much anything Outlook is able to do, including delegate or impersonation access to other user accounts.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/client-developer/web-service-reference/ews-reference-for-exchange

UPDATE: I have released a Python EWS client on PyPI that supports autodiscover, calendars, inbox, tasks, contacts, and more:

from exchangelib import DELEGATE, Account, Credentials

credentials = Credentials(
    username='MYDOMAIN\\myusername',  # Or [email protected] for O365
    password='topsecret'
)
a = Account(
    primary_smtp_address='[email protected]', 
    credentials=credentials, 
    autodiscover=True, 
    access_type=DELEGATE
)
# Print first 100 inbox messages in reverse order
for item in a.inbox.all().only('subject').order_by('-datetime_received')[:100]:
    print(item.subject)

Answer 2

Ive got it, to connect to outbound exchange you need to connect like this:

import smtplib

url = YOUR_EXCHANGE_SERVER
conn = smtplib.SMTP(url,587)
conn.starttls()
user,password = (EXCHANGE_USER,EXCHANGE_PASSWORD)
conn.login(user,password)

now you can send like a normal connection

message = 'From: FROMADDR\nTo: TOADDRLIST\nSubject: Your subject\n\n{}'
from, to = fromaddr,toaddrs
txt = 'This is my message'
conn.sendmail(fromaddr,toaddrs,msg.format(txt))

to get the mail from your inbox its a little different

import imaplib

url = YOUR_EXCHANGE_URL
conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(url,993)
user,password = (EXCHANGE_USER,EXCHANGE_PASSWORD)
conn.login(user,password)
conn.select('INBOX')
results,data = conn.search(None,'ALL')
msg_ids = data[0]
msg_id_list = msg_ids.split()

this gives you a list of message id' s that you can use to get your emails

latest_email_id = msg_id_list[-1]
result,data = conn.fetch(latest_email_id,"(RFC822)")
raw_email = data[0][1]

now raw_email is your email messsage, but its not very pretty, if you want to parse it do somthing like this

from email.parser import Parser

p = Parser()
msg = p.parsestr(raw_email)

now you can do

msg.get('From')
msg.get('Subject')

or for the content

msg.get_payload()

but if its a multipart message your going to need to do a little more processing, luckly a recursive solution is perfect for this situation

def process_multipart_message(message):
    rtn = ''
    if message.is_multipart():
        for m in message.get_payload():
            rtn += process_multipart_message(m)
    else:
        rtn += message.get_payload()
    return rtn

now

msg_contant = process_multipart_message(msg)

will give you the whole message every time.