Read MS Exchange email in C

Question

I need the ability to monitor for and read e-mail from a particular mailbox on a MS Exchange Server  internal to my company   I also need to be able to read the sender s e-mail address  subject  message body and download an attachment  if any   What is the best way to do this using C   or VB NET

User · Answer

The currently preferred  Exchange 2013 and 2016  API is EWS  It is purely HTTP based and can be accessed from any language  but there are  Net and Java specific libraries   You can use EWSEditor to play with the API  Extended MAPI  This is the native API used by Outlook  It ends up using the MSEMS Exchange MAPI provider  which can talk to Exchange using RPC  Exchange 2013 no longer supports it  or RPC-over-HTTP  Exchange 2007 or newer  or MAPI-over-HTTP  Exchange 2013 and newer     The API itself can only be accessed from unmanaged C   or Delphi  You can also use Redemption  any language  - its RDO family of objects is an Extended MAPI wrapper  To use Extended MAPI  you need to install either Outlook or the standalone  Exchange  version of MAPI  on extended support  and it does not support Unicode PST and MSG files and cannot access Exchange 2016   Extended MAPI can be used in a service    You can play with the API using OutlookSpy or MFCMAPI  Outlook Object Model - not Exchange specific  but it allows access to all data available in Outlook on the machine where the code runs  Cannot be used in a service  Exchange Active Sync  Microsoft no longer invests any significant resources into this protocol  Outlook used to install CDO 1 21 library  it wraps Extended MAPI   but it had been deprecated by Microsoft and no longer receives any updates   There used to be a third-party  Net MAPI wrapper called MAPI33  but it is no longer being developed or supported  WebDAV - deprecated  Collaborative Data Objects for Exchange  CDOEX  - deprecated  Exchange OLE DB Provider  EXOLEDB  - deprecated

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If your Exchange server is configured to support POP or IMAP  that s an easy way out   Another option is WebDAV access  there is a library available for that  This might be your best option   I think there are options using COM objects to access Exchange  but I m not sure how easy it is   It all depends on what exactly your administrator is willing to give you access to I guess

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I used code that was published on CodeProject com  If you want to use POP3  it is one of the better solutions that I have found

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You should be able to use MAPI to access the mailbox and get the information you need  Unfortunately the only  NET MAPI library  MAPI33  I know of seems to be unmaintained  This used to be a great way to access MAPI through  NET  but I can t speak to its effectiveness now  There s more information about where you can get it here  Download location for MAPI33 dll

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It s a mess  MAPI or CDO via a  NET interop DLL is officially unsupported by Microsoft--it will appear to work fine  but there are problems with memory leaks due to their differing memory models  You could use CDOEX  but that only works on the Exchange server itself  not remotely  useless  You could interop with Outlook  but now you ve just made a dependency on Outlook  overkill  Finally  you could use Exchange 2003 s WebDAV support  but WebDAV is complicated   NET has poor built-in support for it  and  to add insult to injury  Exchange 2007 nearly completely drops WebDAV support   What s a guy to do  I ended up using AfterLogic s IMAP component to communicate with my Exchange 2003 server via IMAP  and this ended up working very well   I normally seek out free or open-source libraries  but I found all of the  NET ones wanting--especially when it comes to some of the quirks of 2003 s IMAP implementation--and this one was cheap enough and worked on the first try  I know there are others out there    If your organization is on Exchange 2007  however  you re in luck  Exchange 2007 comes with a SOAP-based Web service interface that finally provides a unified  language-independent way of interacting with the Exchange server  If you can make 2007  a requirement  this is definitely the way to go   Sadly for me  my company has a  but 2003 isn t broken  policy    If you need to bridge both Exchange 2003 and 2007  IMAP or POP3 is definitely the way to go

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Here is some old code I had laying around to do WebDAV  I think it was written against Exchange 2003  but I don t remember any more  Feel free to borrow it if its helpful     class MailUtil       private CredentialCache creds   new CredentialCache         public MailUtil                    set up webdav connection to exchange         this creds   new CredentialCache            this creds Add new Uri  http   mail domain com Exchange me domain com Inbox      Basic   new NetworkCredential  myUserName    myPassword    WINDOWSDOMAIN                     lt summary gt          Gets all unread emails in a user s Inbox          lt  summary gt           lt returns gt A list of unread mail messages lt  returns gt      public List lt model Mail gt  GetUnreadMail                 List lt model Mail gt  unreadMail   new List lt model Mail gt              string reqStr                  lt  xml version   1 0    gt                   lt g searchrequest xmlns g   DAV    gt                       lt g sql gt                          SELECT                               urn schemas mailheader from      urn schemas httpmail textdescription                           FROM                               http   mail domain com Exchange me domain com Inbox                             WHERE                                urn schemas httpmail read     FALSE                              AND   urn schemas httpmail subject      tbintg                               AND   DAV contentclass      urn content-classes message                            lt  g sql gt                   lt  g searchrequest gt             byte   reqBytes   Encoding UTF8 GetBytes reqStr               set up web request         HttpWebRequest request    HttpWebRequest HttpWebRequest Create  http   mail domain com Exchange me domain com Inbox             request Credentials   this creds          request Method    SEARCH           request ContentLength   reqBytes Length          request ContentType    text xml           request Timeout   300000           using  Stream requestStream   request GetRequestStream                          try                               requestStream Write reqBytes  0  reqBytes Length                             catch                                         finally                               requestStream Close                                     HttpWebResponse response    HttpWebResponse request GetResponse            using  Stream responseStream   response GetResponseStream                          try                               XmlDocument document   new XmlDocument                    document Load responseStream                       set up namespaces                 XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr   new XmlNamespaceManager document NameTable                   nsmgr AddNamespace  a    DAV                     nsmgr AddNamespace  b    urn uuid c2f41010-65b3-11d1-a29f-00aa00c14882                     nsmgr AddNamespace  c    xml                     nsmgr AddNamespace  d    urn schemas mailheader                     nsmgr AddNamespace  e    urn schemas httpmail                         Load each response  each mail item  into an object                 XmlNodeList responseNodes   document GetElementsByTagName  a response                    foreach  XmlNode responseNode in responseNodes                                           get the  lt propstat gt  node that contains valid HTTP responses                     XmlNode uriNode   responseNode SelectSingleNode  child  a href   nsmgr                       XmlNode propstatNode   responseNode SelectSingleNode  descendant  a propstat a status  HTTP 1 1 200 OK     nsmgr                       if  propstatNode    null                                                   read properties of this response  and load into a data object                         XmlNode fromNode   propstatNode SelectSingleNode  descendant  d from   nsmgr                           XmlNode descNode   propstatNode SelectSingleNode  descendant  e textdescription   nsmgr                               make new data object                         model Mail mail   new model Mail                            if  uriNode    null                              mail Uri   uriNode InnerText                          if  fromNode    null                              mail From   fromNode InnerText                          if  descNode    null                              mail Body   descNode InnerText                          unreadMail Add mail                                                                      catch  Exception e                                string msg   e Message                            finally                               responseStream Close                                     return unreadMail            And model Mail   class Mail       private string uri      private string from      private string body       public string Uri               get   return this uri            set   this uri   value               public string From               get   return this from            set   this from   value               public string Body               get   return this body            set   this body   value

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I got a solution working in the end using Redemption  have a look at these questions      Using Redemption    Using Redemption on a 64 bit machine

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Um    I might be a bit too late here but isn t this kinda the point to EWS    https   msdn microsoft com en-us library dd633710 EXCHG 80  aspx  Takes about 6 lines of code to get the mail from a mailbox   ExchangeService service   new ExchangeService ExchangeVersion Exchange2007 SP1      service Credentials   new NetworkCredential    Active Directory ID      Password      Domain Name       service AutodiscoverUrl   First Last MyCompany com      FindItemsResults lt Item gt  findResults   service FindItems     WellKnownFolderName Inbox     new ItemView  10        foreach   Item item in findResults Items        Console WriteLine  item Subject

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One option is to use Outlook  We have a mail manager application that access an exchange server and uses outlook as the interface  Its dirty but it works   Example code   public Outlook MAPIFolder getInbox                         mailSession   new Outlook Application                mailNamespace   mailSession GetNamespace  MAPI                mailNamespace Logon mail username  mail password  false  true               return MailNamespace GetDefaultFolder Outlook OlDefaultFolders olFolderInbox

[c#] Read MS Exchange email in C#

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