How to extract email message body, without signature or quoted text

Question

What software can I use to process raw email text to remove the signature, quoted thread text, etc...

For example, here is an email. I would like to get just the "Thanks guys." text or more if there was more text there. I do not want the HTML signature (in the first red block) or the old emails that the person was replying to (in the second red block)

Any solutions found for this? Maybe machine learning, LLMs? – belwood Jul 06 '23 at 16:03 — belwood, Jul 06 '23 at 16:03

Wasi Ahmad · Answer 1 · 2016-12-14T08:37:06.377

You can try Message.get_payload from email message handling package.

import email

with open('test.txt', 'r') as myfile:
    data=myfile.read()

body = email.message_from_string(data)
if body.is_multipart():
    for payload in body.get_payload():
        print(payload.get_payload().strip())
else:
    print(body.get_payload().strip())

It outputs:

this is the body text
this is the attachment text

The test.txt file contains the following.

From: John Doe <example@example.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
        boundary="XXXXboundary text"

This is a multipart message in MIME format.

--XXXXboundary text 
Content-Type: text/plain

this is the body text

--XXXXboundary text 
Content-Type: text/plain;
Content-Disposition: attachment;
        filename="test.txt"

this is the attachment text

--XXXXboundary text--

The test does only cover multipart not typical signature lines or quotes — till, Dec 23 '20 at 12:10

How to extract email message body, without signature or quoted text

1 Answers1