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EWS cli tools

A set of command line utilities to interact with an exchange server, powered by the excellent exchangelib

Requirements:

  • bash
  • Python 3

Quick start

  1. Clone the repo and create a virtualenv importing the requirements.txt file.

    git clone [email protected]:flerro/ews-cli-tools.git ews-cli
cd ews-cli
python3 -m venv ./venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

    On Ubuntu derivatives python3-dev package is required to compile all dependecies.

  2. Create the conf.yml configuration file, please refer to conf.template.yml for an example)

    account:
  email: [email protected]
  domain: DOMAIN           
  user: USR1234
  password: PASSWORD
ews:
  server: mail.domain.com      # OWA server
  chunk: 25                    # Batch size for each download request
backup:
  months: 9                    # Backup messages until n months since today 
  delete: False                # Delete message after local download?

  3. (optionally) Add the bin folder to path

    export PATH=$PATH:pwd/bin

Provided tools

Backup email messages

The backup.sh script will download messages from inbox and sent folders and store them locally. Downloaded messages can be optionally removed from server.

Each message is saved to a self-contained .eml file, named after message date-time and subject. The backup folder is organized by folder, year and month. Messages in inbox folder are also organized by sender.

account
├── inbox
│   ├── 2018
│   │   ├── 02
│   │   │   ├── [email protected]
│   │   │   │   ├── 2018-02-01_0722___subject1.eml
│   │   │   │   └── 2018-02-10_1137___subject2.eml
...
│
└── sent
   ├── 2018
   │   ├── 03
   │   │   ├── 2018-03-01_0722___subject1.eml
   │   │   └── 2018-03-10_1137___subject2.eml
   ...
   └── 2019
       ├── 03
       │   ├── 2019-03-07_0722___subject1.eml
       │   └── 2019-03-11_1137___subject2.eml
       ...

This directory structure enable e-mail search by standard unix tools. Use:

  • find . -type d ... to locate a sender,
  • find . -name ... for a specific subject
  • grep -R ... to search in message content.

Please note that sub-folders under inbox and sent are currently not processed

Extract text from email

Use the text_extract.sh script to extract text from a multipart e-mail message stored in eml format.

Additional helpful tools

Any email client on Linux (e.g. Kmail, Evolution) is able to read the eml format.

xdg-open filename.eml

Use mpack to extract attachments from the command line.

$ sudo apt-get install mpack
$ munpack email.eml 
tempdesc.txt: File exists
image001.jpg.3 (image/jpeg)

If you have Outlook PST or OST archive laying around, you can extract messages to eml format via readpst.

$ sudo apt install pst-utils
$ readpst -o mailbox -e archive.pst
Opening PST file and indexes...
Processing Folder "Posta eliminata"
Processing Folder "Posta in arrivo"
Processing Folder "Posta in uscita"
	"Posta eliminata" - 0 items done, 2 items skipped.
...