Duplicate emails different sub folders

[Don Guillett]

I have many duplicate (exactly the same) emails in separate sub folders of
my \save folder. Looking for a good way to delete.
Vista HP, vista mail 6 with all updates

 

[mac]

I have many duplicate (exactly the same) emails in separate sub folders of
my \save folder. Looking for a good way to delete.
Vista HP, vista mail 6 with all updates

Don, it is NOT a good idea to post to the newsgroups using your valid email
address, it will be collected and farmed by the spambots, maybe that is part
of your other problem?


MVP Dr Steve Cochran has a program that will do what you want:
http://www.oehelp.com/OEX/Default.aspx

http://www.oehelp.com/Default.aspx
WORKS IN WINDOWS MAIL IN VISTA.

Talk to him nicely, you never know <eg,d,aravvf>

 

[Steve Cochran]

+you.

<G>

Unfortunately it only removes duplicates from individual folders and not
across folders, which I think is what he asked.

steve

 

[Don Guillett]

Steve, my problem is I want to remove emails where there is a match for:

subject from date size

Where all match. I CAN move to the same sub folder to delete.
Since I am an Excel developer,
I would really like an Excel macro that brings in>culls>takes back.

 

[Steve Cochran]

Unfortunately WinMail's programmability is limited and not well-documented.
I could probably write something to do that, but its a bit intricate and
wouldn't be used to the extent that its profitable to do. WLM is worse as
there is no documented programmability at all with it.

steve

 

[Don Guillett]

Will your program do as desired. I anticipate only one use to clean up these
files?

 

[Steve Cochran]

It will only do it on a folder by folder basis. It won't remove a
duplicated message from folder1 that is also in folder2. It will only
remove a message if the duplicate is in the same folder.

steve

 

[Don Guillett]

Steve, That's fine because my final solution is to have all in one folder
called "SAVE"
I can move all into one. Then I want to delete IF ALL 4 match, leaving only
oneIn excel, I would create a macro that looked at each cell in the row below
and if the same, across the board, delete the row below. I do this all the
time. I don't know how to import>do my compare>export back to the email
folder (withOUT hurting the message). I know how to bring in such things as
mp3 files>do whatever is desired to change,etc because that is working with
a file name in a regular folder...
If you need any Excel help, let me know.

 

[Steve Cochran]

Hi Don,

I know how to program it across folders, its just that it takes a
significant amount of time to customize something like that and its not
worth the effort to me. We are not dealing with an Excel spreadsheet in
terms of level of programming effort involved.

You could copy all the messages to one folder and then run OEX and remove
the duplicates, but then you would have to reparse them into individual
folders and OEX will not do that.

steve

 

[Sam Hobbs]

See "Windows Mail (formerly Outlook Express)" at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms709546(VS.85).aspx

It documents an API that could be used to do what you are trying to do.
Unfortunately it cannot be used from a macro. It is difficult to even use it
from a .Net environment such as C#. Microsoft has not provided a more
convenient API obviously because they don't want to do anything more with OE
and WinMail.

Also see "Simple MAPI" at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd296734(VS.85).aspx

Simple MAPI can also be used with OE and WinMail, but it can only access the
InBox folder; it cannot access any messages in any other folder. Note that
it says "Deprecated" many times because they don't want to do anything more
with OE and WinMail.

See the "System.Net.Mail Namespace" API at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.aspx

You can use that in any program that supports .Net, but it does not do
anything with incoming mail nor does it do anything with messages already
received.

Also see "Messaging and Collaboration", which lists a few other
possibilities. I am not familiar with anything you can use in a script,
except maybe CDO. There are actually multiple versions of CDO and the are
the same by name only; they are not all the same. There is at least one
version of CDO that can do what you need to do but it is likely not
available without installing Outlook or other purchased email software.

Since WinMail stores messages in files, you might be able to access the
messages external from WinMail, but that is not likely to work unless you
can write something that reads the messages to get all the properties you
need. If you were able to do that, then you could delete the relevant files.
That would however likely corrupt the message store but hopefully that can
be re-created somehow. Other experts here could help with that.

The WinMail message store (where details such as subject, sender, date and
size are stored) reportedly uses a "Jet" Red or Blue database, which is the
same as or similar to the Access databases. I can't find documentation that
clarifies that however.

 

[Steve Cochran]

WinMail uses the Jet Blue database not the Jet red (access) database:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684493(EXCHG.10).aspx

 

[Sam Hobbs]

Thank you for that. I tried to find that information (Red or Blue for
WinMail) in the documentation. I did know about the ESE documentation but I
could not remember the name and I could not find the link when I created my
reply.

I tried modifying an ESE sample program to attempt to access the message
store but I was unsuccessful. Perhaps (I am not sure) the problem was that I
was using Jet Red. I posted a question in the messaging development
newsgroup a few months ago asking Red or Blue that got no answers.

Years ago I attempted to find API information for OE and I was unable to. At
the time I really, really could use a way to access an OE folder other than
the InBox. So when I stumbled upon the OE API documentation a few months ago
I was happy to use a documented solution. I tried using the API using C# but
decided it was too much work. If I were to continue, I would either do it
all in C++ or learn how to write an object using C++ that could be used by
C#.

At the moment I don't have a need for it but it is worth knowing about.

 

[Steve Cochran]

There is no documentation on how WinMail uses ESE. I had to figure it out
for the outbox message deletion I added to WMUtil, and it was quite a
challenge. I wound up coding the ESE access routines in C++ and then
calling them from VB.NET.

steve