Summary: In this tutorial, we are going to discuss possible methods to retrieve body from MBOX file. You will also get the understanding of MBOX files, and also the section of why we need to extract email body from MBOX files.
MBOX is a popular mailbox file format that saves multiple email messages into one text file. It is typically supported in various email clients like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Eudora and Postbox. It includes everything of an email like To, From, Cc, Bcc and time and most significantly email body.
You can also view this blog, if you want information particularly on how to extract email addresses from Thunderbird.
Need to Extract Email Body from MBOX
This section will cover the reasons to retrieve the body from the MBOX file.
- In various situations, organizations would require an email body to examine checks Also, to find keywords without opening that particular emails
- We extract the email body to share for various other email services
- It is also to analyze the message contents by yourself
- Otherwise, what if the email client does not give you access to your MBOX file.
- To manually open each email and copy its body is a bit difficult with hundreds of messages to process.
Ways to Retrieve Body from MBOX Files – Manual Techniques
There are few methods by which you can extract body from MBOX files. But, for that you need to know the basic working of various email clients.
#1. Retrieve Email Body From Thunderbird Client
Thunderbird is one among the popular email clients which supports MBOX files.
- Download Thunderbird on your system
- Next, configure a dummy email account.
- Use the ImportExportTools NG add-on.
- Now open the MBOX file in your Thunderbird client
- You have to open every email and do the copy paste manually.
Limitations:
- Time-consuming for large MBOX files
- You need to apply manual work per email
- No way to batch fetch email bodies only
- Thunderbird might crash when handling large or corrupt files
#2. Extract Email Body Using Text Editor
This is the method where you are gonna use a text editor for extracting your email body. As MBOX files store data in plain text structure, then it would be effective:
- Firstly, open the MBOX file in any text editor.
- Next, look for MIME headers like “Content-Type: text/plain or text/html”.
- After that, choose the email body which you want to extract and copy.
Drawbacks:
- There is more technical steps involved
- High risk of misreading data
- No separation between emails
- Not suitable for non-technical users
Retrieve Email Body From MBOX Files – Smart Approach
The above manual process will test your technical skills and is not suitable for everyone to go for easy email extraction. So, I would recommend you to go with SysTools MBOX Email Address Extractor. It allows you to extract any email properties like To, From, Cc, Bcc, Headers, & Body of your choice and a more secure way of doing it.
Key Points:
- You can extract email body from single or multiple MBOX files
- Preserve all types of emails in plain text & HTML
- Runs without the need of any mail clients
- Effortlessly loads bulky and inaccessible MBOX files
- Offers a simple, & user-friendly interface to interact
- Get instant results when you go for batch email extraction
- Works for all major Windows & Mac OS
End Note
It’s difficult to extract when you have emails in large numbers. Keeping in mind, we have provided various manual options. But, it too fails for multiple emails and is not that effective. For that, we too have professional steps which you can follow to easily retrieve body from MBOX files. It saves manual effort, and keeps away data corruption and gets your important email contents without inconvenience.
Quick FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Why does the message display change after the extraction process?
Ans. This is due to a wrong encoding of characters and incorrect MIME structures during extraction. Under those circumstances, a tool which auto-detects encoding is helpful to keep intact readability.
Q2. Can I recover the email body of the MBOX message that contains only the HTML structure?
Ans. Yes, but manual methods show raw code only, going with professionals will display human-readable content properly. This will make sure the formatting is kept and no any HTML tags are displayed.
Q3. What’s with some of the email bodies being empty?
Ans. It happens when multipart MIME messages are not being parsed correctly. It works well with both plain text and HTML parts.
Q4. How can I get only the body of an email without its built-in attachments?
Ans. You can, by using our expert steps that offer selectively extract without getting them at all. This reduces overall processing time and load on the system.