Fetch an email with imaplib but do not mark it as SEEN

Question

I want to parse some emails from a user 's inbox but when I do:

typ, msg_data = imap_conn.fetch(uid, '(RFC822)')

It marks the email as SEEN or read. This is not the desired functionality. Do you know how can I keep the email at its previous stare either SEEN or NOT SEEN?

score 46 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 31 '17 at 15:38

46

You might also set read_only to true when selecting the folder:

imap_conn.select('Inbox', readonly=True)

edited Jul 31 '17 at 15:38

Martin Thoma

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answered Oct 18 '10 at 01:38

lezardo

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This is unsuitable if you want to modify the folder for other reasons (say, remove some of the messages you have peeked at because they are spam, or whatever). – tripleee Jun 22 '16 at 08:19
You may call `imap_conn.select('Inbox')` before modifying the folder and then `imap_conn.select('Inbox', readonly=True)` again. It's simpler and more reliable to use PEEK, of course. – Ilya Semenov Oct 23 '19 at 05:09

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 18:15

23

The following should work:

typ, msg_data = imap_conn.fetch(uid, '(BODY.PEEK[HEADER])')

or BODY.PEEK[TEXT], etc.

answered Jul 19 '10 at 18:15

ars

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Simply `BODY.PEEK[]` gets the entire message without modifying `\Sent`. – tripleee Mar 05 '19 at 08:50
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BODY.PEEK[] does not work on gmail's IMAP implementation. – Jimmy Engelbrecht Apr 20 '21 at 22:57

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 07 '21 at 05:59

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You can use (RFC822.PEEK) as the "message-parts" argument, according to RFC 1730 (I have not verified which servers actually implement that correctly, but it doesn't seem hard for them to).

edited Oct 07 '21 at 05:59

Community

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answered Jul 19 '10 at 17:58

Alex Martelli

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Unfortunately it did not work with Gmail but the previous answer did. Thank you anyway! – PanosJee Jul 19 '10 at 18:27
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RFC1730 is long since obsoilete. The [RFC3501](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501) equivalent is `BODY.PEEK[]` – tripleee Mar 05 '19 at 08:49

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 09 '19 at 13:08

You may use imap_tools package: https://pypi.org/project/imap-tools/

from imap_tools import MailBox, Q

# get list of email subjects from INBOX folder
with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('test@mail.com', 'password') as mailbox:
    # mark_seen=False - not mark emails as seen on fetch
    subjects = [msg.subject for msg in mailbox.fetch(mark_seen=False)]

Fetch an email with imaplib but do not mark it as SEEN

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