Fontzie said:
I ask about this a while back but didn't get a response, just thought I'd
ask again before I give up trying.
I want to be able to extract urls for about 1000 emails I have in my inbox
Is there a way I can do it or a freebie program to do it without opening
every darn email up copy and pasting
thanks for reading
fontzie
Ideas:
Check the MVP OE sites for ideas. Check (with) the Microsoft Outlook
Express newsgroup.
I've seen a freewarish "archive" program that converts OE files to
text. In quickly looking around I don't recognize any of the names
but someone in ACF will remember. IIRC the author featured extracting
mail from a damaged archive. (Not Outport, that's Outlook only).
[OT] Several trial/demo programs appear to export messages to a single
text file in a variety of formats such as text, HTML, or MS Word.
Either of the Pricelessware sites has good file renamer
recommendations if you use the drag-n-drop approach. Any of them will
do a good job of changing a group of file extension, as will several
others mmentioned in ACF. Personally I find Oscar's Renamer the most
intuitive for general use if you don't already have a favorite
freeware file renamer.
CDD2 is a specialiazed clipboard that can create a seperate cumulative
log containing just URLs. I haven't used it so it may not be
applicable (e.g., it may rely on HTML tags to identify URLs).
Instead of CDD2, an e-mail stipper such as unreply or a clipboard with
processing options (maybe Clippy?) also might be adapted to your
purpose. Unreply and Clippy have been suggested in ACF but I haven't
used them.
If e-mail is extracted to a seperate file, these could be combined
into one file. See Pricelessware or ACF for freeware that does this.
The next few ideas require progressively more knowledge/effort on your
part.
The Pricelessware sites also have Windows automation suggestions. One
of these could be used to automate the following process:
1) open each e-mail, 2) select the body, 3) copy to clipboard, 4)
apply CDD2, and 5) go to the next email.
Once the messages are extracted, any good wordprocessor/editor should
allow you to easily write a macro to extract any line/paragraph that
contains any of several strings such as "http:", "www.", ".com",
".org", etc. Some also will "learn" a macro by recording what you do
in the editor. A few even include an option to find URLs, which would
make recording a macro quite straightforward.
Several readily available utilities such as a suite of *nix tools for
Windows that include awk and sed could also be used.
I have several bookmarklets (small javascripts for browsers) that pull
URLs and/or email addresses that _might_ be adaptable, but I think
they depend upon HTML tags.
BillR
