SEARCH Outlook inbox using Python

Question

I'm successfully connecting to and reading through my Outlook inbox using some code modified from: Reading e-mails from Outlook with Python through MAPI. What I'd like to do is search my inbox for certain email subjects. I can do this by just looping through all emails but wondering if there is a more elegant (perhaps using MAPI) way to search the inbox? I've looked through the MailItem methods but can't seem to find anything.

Thanks

Answer 1

You need to use the AdvancedSearch method of the Application class which allows to search for items in multiple folders. The Restrict and Find/FindNext methods of the Items class allow to search for items in the single folder only.

The key benefits of using the AdvancedSearch method in Outlook are:

• The search is performed in another thread. You don’t need to run another thread manually since the AdvancedSearch method runs it automatically in the background.
• Possibility to search for any item types: mail, appointment, calendar, notes etc. in any location, i.e. beyond the scope of a certain folder. The Restrict and Find/FindNext methods can be applied to a particular Items collection (see the Items property of the Folder class in Outlook).
• Full support for DASL queries (custom properties can be used for searching too). You can read more about this in the Filtering article in MSDN. To improve the search performance, Instant Search keywords can be used if Instant Search is enabled for the store (see the IsInstantSearchEnabled property of the Store class).
• You can stop the search process at any moment using the Stop method of the Search class.

Read more about the AdvancedSearch method in the Advanced search in Outlook programmatically: C#, VB.NET article. Note, the Outlook object model is common for all programming languages, so it doesn't matter whether Python or C# is used.

Answer 2

The link you posted talks about using Outlook Object Model, not MAPI - Extended MAPI is a completely different API accessible from C++ or Delphi, but not from Python.

To search for an email, use Items.Find/FindNext or Items.Restrict (where Items collection comes from the MAPIFolder.Items property) - see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms268869.aspx for an example.