Backing up Official Email
There is a good tool that is written by Mark Lyon called Gmail Loader (http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/) which is capable of reading all your emails in mBox format and upload them to the Gmail using the APIs exposed by gmail. But unfortunately the PSTs are in pst format and not in open mBox format. Yes, Mark also has faced this problem and he has found some tools which can convert the PSTs to mbox format (http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/gmailapps.htm) which can be later supplied to the Gmail loader. I also did the same, but I got a lot of errors in the conversion process missing lot of emails. Later when I tried to use the uploader I came to know that the Gmail Loader uses a port that is blocked in my company’s firewall. Then I started looking up some alternative ways. I had some little experience in writing simple Macros to do some stuff in Excel sheets using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). So I started looking at macros for Outlook that can forward emails to my personal ID.
Finally I ended up in writing a Macro which will read all my emails in the personal folder and forward it to gmail. Following is the macro,
Transfer all emails in a folder inside a personal folder
'Sub routine to call the kernel sleep API
Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
'Author : Pradhap Nirmal Natarajan
Sub ScanFolders()
'define the types of variables
Dim ns As NameSpace
Dim Item As Object
Dim i As Integer
Dim addr As String
'this module forwards all emails in a specific personal folder
Set ns = GetNamespace("MAPI")
'grab the personal folder you want to read
'in the code below cognizant is a personal folder inside which the folder Visa is present
Set projArchiveFolder = ns.Folders.Item("Cognizant").Folders.Item("Visa")
For Each Item In projArchiveFolder.Items
'dont forward read receipts for which class property is 46
If Not Item.Class = 46 Then
Set oOldMail = Item
'equivalent to the forward click in outlook
Set oMail = oOldMail.forward
'the recipient
addr = "prathapnirmal+cog.others.Visa@gmail.com"
oMail.Recipients.Add addr
oMail.Recipients.Item(1).Resolve
If oMail.Recipients.Item(1).Resolved Then
oMail.Send
Else
MsgBox "Could not resolve " & oMail.Recipients.Item(1).Name
End If
'sleep for a specific time (use this if you want a time gap between each send)
'Sleep 15000
End If
Next Item
End Sub
Transfer all emails inside all Folders in a Personal Folder
Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
Sub ScanFolders()
Dim ns As NameSpace
Dim Item As Object
Dim i As Integer
Dim addr As String
Set ns = GetNamespace("MAPI")
i = 0
Set projArchiveFolder = ns.Folders.Item("Cognizant").Folders.Item("Projects Archive").Folders
For i = 1 To projArchiveFolder.Count
For Each Item In projArchiveFolder.Item(i).Items
'dont forward read receipts
If Not Item.Class = 46 Then
Set oOldMail = Item
Set oMail = oOldMail.forward
addr = "prathapnirmal+cognizant.projects." & projArchiveFolder.Item(i).Name & "@gmail.com"
oMail.Recipients.Add addr
oMail.Recipients.Item(1).Resolve
If oMail.Recipients.Item(1).Resolved Then
oMail.Send
Else
MsgBox "Could not resolve " & oMail.Recipients.Item(1).Name
End If
'Sleep 5000
End If
Next Item
Next i
End Sub
If you look at the code above you will see that the personal ID is a little different. It says prathapnirmal+cog.visa@gmail.com It doesn’t mean that I have a ID like this exclusively for Visa. This is a feature that you can use in the email ids to classify emails. My wish is to move all these emails to a different folder in the mailbox to easily differentiate them as you write rules in outlook. Gmail provides a feature called labeling to do this. So create a filter to move emails to different labels based on the to address. Following is what I got,
The mails are routed to different labels based on to Address. Please write to me at prathapnirmal+questions@gmail.com in case of any questions. Some useful bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/pradhapnirmal/jobexit
