Search email with information in detailed headers

[ian.spencer]

I have a lot of email accounts for family and friends I am trying to tidy up, email in hotmail, gmail outlook etc. I have email going back to 1994 and a lot of it. I want to be able to search the headers so I can sort email first by getting the original address the email was sent to. I am currently downloading using IMAP some Gmail accounts that have had a lot of email addresses forwarded to them.

I have been able to identify one line in the header that is clear who the original email recipient was.

X-ORIG-TO:ian@myemail***.com

I have downloaded using IMAP into Outlook 2010 and there seems no way to search or filter either. I saw the odd process where people were writing code to examine headers with linux mail servers but I need something fairly easy to use. Preferably using outlook with an add-in or something I can do without extensive programming knowledge. Maybe using IMAP and other email software or online service this is possible, any suggestions very gratefully accepted. I have have spent about 4 hours trying to work this out without luck or skill ;-)

Thanks

 

[Cathy Rhone]

Have you seen the method here: http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/adding-extended-mapi-fields-to-outlook/ ? I don't think you can group by it but you might be able to sort by it.

If you want to do something with words in the header, create a rule and use run now. You can more to folders or categorize by sender (then group by sender) this way. You'll need a rule for each address though. My suggestion is to export your current rules then create the ones to set categories on the mail archives.

Also, if you have mail in an imap account, this won't work as well as the category may be lost when you sync to the server.

If you want to keep the mail forever, i'd export to a universal format, like pdf or html. Acrobat can export to nice, searchable pdf's and they have a free trial available. There are also some archive utilities for outlook that can export to HTML. See http://www.slipstick.com/addins/housekeeping-and-message-management-outlook/ for a list.

Another option is putting everything into GMail - they offer huge free mailboxes and are very searchable. You could label mail by sender, but i tend just to archive everything to keep my inbox clean then use search to find stuff.

 

[ian.spencer]

Thank you for you quick response catherized

I Read the Slipstick page but I was not able to understand it.

I Looked at the software and saving emails to PDF sounds good but I still need to sort the emails by the to address, pity Gmail does not allow full header search. I think I want all my email on Gmail for easy searching.

I see the software applications but am unsure which one would do what I want with full headers.

I am moving people over to Google Apps for Gmail mostly and need to get peoples email accounts that have had multiple email addresses forwarded to them. This is why I am trying to search / filter by the X-ORIG-TO:ian@myemail***.co from the headers.

Once done Gmail will be much easier to work with and rather than forwarding I am adding multiple alias domains and that seems to work really well.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

The users don't know what addresses they have? Also, if the accounts are defunct, it won't matter - you won't need to configure them in gmail because they aren't accepting mail. Gmail will reply using the gmail address.




Create a rule for header contains X-ORIG-TO and copy the messages to a new folder and use Run Rules Now. This will give you all the messages with that text in the header. You'll still need to go through each message, one by one to check the addresses. Pocketknife peek will make it easier to view the headers... http://www.xintercept.com/peek/pkpeek.htm




If you know the addresses, make rules for the specifc address and use Run Now. Use either categories or separate folders for each address.




My lazy suggestion: move the accounts you know exist and have them keep using the old accounts for now. Check the headers of mail still going to the old mailbox. If mail is being forwarded, they need to check it on the forwarding service. If they are using a feature that pops mail from other servers, you can get that from their account settings.




FWIW, i'd also consider dumping the really old mail -its just taking up space and I'll bet its never read. (I have mail going back to 2004 in my gmail account and its only there because I'm too lazy to delete. I'm trying to be better about labeling mail i need to keep - like receipts - and deleting the stuff that is useless after time has passed. If i ever leave gmail, I will not keep anything older than 5 yrs.)