I would like to be able to perform SQL queries on my e-mail inbox. With the output, I can make graphs about how much e-mails I send or receive for example. I want to analyze my performance and what keeps me busy. My mailbox seems like a good place to start.
I'm using Gmail on-line, and Thunderbird, Outlook 2007 and Mail.app trough IMAP. Is there an easy way how I can connect one of those apps with something I can SQL to?
Allready tried:
Thunderbird does not have an add-on for this (or I couldn’t find it).
I suspect Outlook to be able to do something together with MS Access, but I wouldn't know how.
None of my client seems to be able to export everyting to something useful, like CVS or Excel's .xls. From there on, I can import to Access and done.
UPDATE: Access 2007 does have a wizard on connecting to outlook. But when I run it, Office starts for no reaston to complain that Outlook 2007 is not found (?).
UPDATE 2: You can fix this by setting Outlook as the default e-mail client, closing outlook and starting it again.
You can simply connect Outlook to Access via Access Wizards or code (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/209946/en-us)
You can parse mbox files (which Thunderbird uses to store it's messages) using any number of scripts like this then do any sql on the messages you like.
I agree with stalepretzel, you should probably make your own if you can't find any ready-to-go package.
What I'd do is:
Download the messages using IMAP.
Parse them and insert into your database
You could make good use of the mess822 software package to parse the mail headers, then use that to populate a database.
I think a lot of script languages (perl, python) have similar libraries (probably for IMAP as well) and should be fairly easy to hack together.
I suggest making your own addon. I'm not familiar with Thunderbird addons (and I've only dabbled in FF ones), but I assume they're like FF addons in that if you know Javascript your well on your way. I would research Thunderbird addons, and create one that runs an AJAX script whenever it receives a message. That AJAX could contact a PHP script (which you'd need to run on something like Apache, possibly just on your home computer). This PHP script, in turn, would interpret the data that Thunderbird's Javascript sent, and enter that into a database.
Related
I created a protocol generation tool that reads some data from a websource, allows the user to filter some of the fields an generate a protocol based on given filterdata. The protocol is generated as a word document that is edited multiple times, on multiple layers, before shown to the user.
For some users the line:
Process.Start(pathtowordfile)
does not open Word, for others it works fine.
Even more strange: if the useres try to generate the protocol the first time it opens. if they change one of the filters and generate again, the file does not open. But it is generated correctly, you are able to open it manually.
We are using Windows 7 on all machines and, in general, the User has no administrativ privileges on the machine.
Are there any alternatives to
Process.Start()
?
Not sure how the code can sometimes work, but the critical bit I think would be to make sure you set UseShellExecute=true when you are trying to Process.Start a file that is not an executable.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.processstartinfo.useshellexecute%28v=vs.110%29.aspx
I haven't looked into it in quite awhile, but last I checked shell execute relies on the Word application to be properly registered with DDE so Windows knows what to do with a .doc(x) file. Word may not be installed "properly".
after trying varios things, including Wonko's hint, I dicided to use the interop.Word.Wordapplication to display the document. It doesn't explain why process.start not does the job but anyway, now everybody of the users is happy^^
I created a time recording program in vb.net with a sql-server as backend. User can send there time entries into the database (i used typed datasets functionality) and send different queries to get overviews over there working time.
My plan was to put that exe in a folder in our network and let the user make a link on their desktops. Every user writes into the same table but can only see his own entries so there is no possibility that two user manipulate the same dataset.
During my research i found a warning that "write contentions between the different users" can be occur. Is that so in my case?
Has anyone experience with "many user using the same exe" and where that is using datasets and could give me an advice whether it is working or what i should do instead?
SQL Server will handle all of your multi-user DB access concerns.
Multiple users accessing the same exe from a network location can work but it's kind of a hack. Let's say you wanted to update that exe with a few bug fixes. You would have to ensure that all users close the application before you could release the update. To answer you question though, the application will be isolated to each user running it. You won't have any contention issues when it comes to CRUD operations on the database due to the network deployment.
You might consider something other than a copy/paste style publishing of your application. Visual Studio has a few simple tools you can use to publish your application to a central location using ClickOnce deployment.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/31kztyey(v=vs.110).aspx
My solution was to add a simple shutdown-timer in the form, which alerts users to saving their data before the program close att 4 AM.
If i need to upgrade, i just replace the .exe on the network.
Ugly and dirty, yes... but worked like a charm for the past 2 years.
good luck!
I came by this page and was thinking about the best method to distribute my VbaProject.OTM file (located into %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\) to a bunch of ~30 users at my office. Is it better to simply copy/paste the OTM file onto the network and then copy/paste it back to all users' computers (manually or with a .bat) OR would it be better to use the method described in the link above to generate a OPS file and import it back with Proflwiz.exe? What's the difference?
We are all on Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 actually, we might upgrade to 2007 one day but still years from now.
Finally came up with some elements to deploy a Outlook VBA Project. There are a lot of ways to do this, but the easiest way to do so without installing anything and keeping the same methodology would be to run a OTM file directly from a server. I found out that the process outlook.exe has a parameter altvba that allows to specify another path to run the OTM file from. Here is en example:
outlook.exe /altvba "\\myServer\myFolder\myFile.otm"
This allows me to update only one file to get all computers updated. Obviously, if the file is big and the server's ping is on the high side, it may delay the launch of Outlook. The other problem with this method is that everybody will have to shut down Office if you want to update the OTM file on the server (and if you do work in an office where everyone uses Outlook, you do know that it is impossible to get everyone to shut it down at the same time, except if you code a macro to do so eventually). To prevent both those problems, I could setup a batch file to copy the server OTM file clientside everytime there is a new version (just have to check the NTFS last-modify attribute). This way, Outlook will boot with a local file, the batch file take 2-3 seconds to copy the file if needed (or will launch Outlook instantaneously) and there will be no problem updating the OTM file on the server. Users will have to start Outlook with the batch file (or with the slightly different outlook.exe path with the altvba parameter, so either way they need a different shortcut/file to start off the first time). One other advantage of the altvba is that it's still easy for the user to run Outlook without it (to see if the VBA is problematic or not in case Outlook is sluggish) and the file will remain unchanged after a Outlook reinitialization.
Others solutions include a COM complement that can be developed in a lot on languages including VB6 (no conversion needed from VBA). There is also a bunch of tools included into Microsoft Office XP Developer that could help getting the job done (not free however, especially if you need the most up-to-date version).
We have a process at our company that processes TIFF images. I have a project where I want to be able to capture emails that people have received and let them pass it on to our imaging process. Right now forwarding an email isn't really an option but our initial thought was that we could create an Outlook addin that would create and send an image of the email to our internal webservice and it would just work.
I'm developing on Windows 7 with VS2010 and Outlook 2007.
I have the basic addin framework setup - that seems to work OK. The addin is there, popping a regular Windows form where I can do my stuff. But now I'm running into problems. First I was going leverage the built-in Microsoft Office Document Image Writer which can write to TIFFs. However, this doesn't appear to be installed as part of Office 2007 on Windows 7. Then I found some references that it didn't work on Win7 64bit in the first place, and that Microsoft was phasing it out in favor of their XPS printer anyway.
Then I moved on to thinking I could maybe use PDFCreator. This sort of works, except it looks like I have to actually have PDFCreator installed on the client machine, too. I was really hoping I could just bundle the dll and PDFCreator could natively "print", but it seems rely on you setting the active printer to "PDFCreator" and still printing to that. I was already maybe going to run into problems pushing a custom addin out to users in the first place; I don't know if I could get a new printer rolled out as a requirement, too.
On top of that, you apparently can't set the active/default printer in Outlook once it's running. So my plan to run the addin, change the default printer to PDFCreator, print it, then change it back isn't going to work after all anyway.
We really wanted to be able to capture emails as if the user had printed them out and scanned them, which is what they have to do now. I would really not like to rely on copying/pasting into another application if I can help with it.
Sooooooo, what other options might I have? Is there any close to native functionality in Windows or Office that would let me print to something and eventually get a TIFF? Does it look like I'm going to have to try and string together a bunch of 3rd party tools or something? It looks like the only way to "print" an email is to do the MailItem.PrintOut() command, which is just going to go to whatever the current default printer is. Are there any other TIFF-printing things available that wouldn't involve installing a new virtual printer on the end user's machine? Any other ideas? Thanks for any help!
Although you ruled it out at the start of the question...
Assuming you need those tiffs at a central location and not at the employee desktop.... I'd still advise you to have your addin forward the respective mail to a central location (as an attachment to a automated mail, or perhaps just write it to a queue folder on some network location), then have a central process pick it up and print it out to tiff files.
Unless you have exact control over the client machines at your company (which from the sound of it, you don't), you really want to move some fickle as 'switching printers in Outlook' away from the clients.
That doesn't mean this approach doesn't require hacks as well, because that central process will be running outlook to do the work.
I assume it is important that your tiffs look like they were actually printed from Outlook, if not please add that as extra information to your question, as it opens new routes. Like capturing the email-screen rendering and putting that inside a tiff file, which can all be done on any desktop machine.
I am looking for information on using mstscax.dll in VB. The goal is to create a utility that logs into a remote service in the same manner as remote desktop. However, my utility is not required to show the desktop.
I have a series of commands that I will start off with that will look for users, reset logins, shadow, and message. I have been using a batch file on my RDP to perform these functions, but we are already looking for more functionality and power than what the batch commands can offer.
I am googling 'mstscax.dll' but the results have been less than satisfactory although I continue to search. Does anyone have any good references? Is this even going to be possible?
If you are looking to list or perform operations on remote desktop sessions, you might find the Cassia library helpful. The library can list users logged on to a server, disconnect or logoff sessions, shadow sessions, and display message boxes in a session, among other things. (Note that the shadowing functionality requires a pre-release version of the library available on the project's build server -- use the artifacts link.)
I think you're supposed to use the msrdp.ocx control rather than that dll, though I've personally never used either so can't say for sure.
Edit: Add link
Here's a codeproject article about automating RDP:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/RemoteDesktop_CSharpNET.aspx