[Alpine-info] ingesting .msg files

[Joshua Miller via Alpine-info]

Hello!

I ran into this ages ago. FYI for those asking how you got a .msg file, I
got mine via outlook users that attached another email to their email and
sent it to me. I've used msgconvert.pl to handle them.

You noted that Debian and Ubuntu have "msgconv"; Maybe that was a typo, or
you got it from the msgconvert site URL? "msgconv" handles character set
conversions (Ex. mapping Greek characters to equivalents in other character
sets). I think you are referring to the same utility I used, and it's the
same one you linked to at https://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/

That, msgconvert, is a perl script. It uses the perl module
"Email::Outlook::Message" to do the heavy lifting, and
"Email::LocalDelivery" to write output to an mbox compatible file. You
should be able to install that cleanly just about anywhere.

You noted it didn't trivially build on Fedora - what problems did you have?
I took a quick peek at fedora package search for perl-email-outlook-message
but I don't see it in their default repositories. Maybe you can find that
prepackaged elsewhere in an rpm? The CPAN based install noted on the
msgconvert site should also work. Once that prerequisite is installed (and
the couple other trivial ones), the script should run fine.

Running it as you have is more-or-less how I made use of it. More
precisely, I would:

* From alpine, save the .msg file to a temp directory.
* From another terminal, run msgconvert.pl to add that message to an
existing mbox I dedicated to this use. Ex:

    msgconvert.pl --mbox ~/mail/msgconv_dumps /path/to/temp/file.msg

* Back in alpine, I had configured mailboxes to look at that mbox file, so
I can just switch to that folder. The newly added messages will be marked
as new and unread.

For me, that was far better than firing up Outlook. Sadly, my company moved
to Office 365 (or whatever it's called now) and has restricted what email
clients may authenticate, so I just use web based outlook and avoid email
when possible, lol.

Hope that helps!
--
Josh I.

On Sat, Feb 7, 2026 at 11:44 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via Alpine-info <
alpine-info at u.washington.edu> wrote:


> Every once in a long while, I have to deal with a .msg file.

>

> .msg is an MS Outlook thing.  It is a container for email or related

> things.

> <

> https://www.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/resources/document-files/text-files/msg.html

> >

>

> I'm on Fedora Linux and it doesn't seem to have anything to unpack

> .msg files.

>

> - LibreOffice has a go at it but isn't successful

>

> - debian and Ubuntu have a tool "msgconv".

>         <https://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/>

>         <https://github.com/mvz/email-outlook-message-perl>

>   This didn't trivially build on Fedora so I gave up.

>

> I did use msgconv on Ubuntu.  It worked but was a bit awkward.

> Note: my Alpine uses mbox format folders.

>

> - copy .msg file to Ubuntu machine

>

> - "msgconvert -mbox mbox *.msg"

>

> - copy "mbox" to machine where I run Alpine

>

> - alpine -f ../mbox

>

> - you are now looking at the contents of the .msg; do what you want with

>   it.

>

> One could use Outlook on an MS Windows machine but I don't have a license

> for Outlook.  Besides, I fear the learning curve (I've never lived on

> Windows).

>

> Does it make sense for Alpine to be able to open .msg attachments?

> (Kind of like the way Alpine can open RFC 822 attachments -- nice, BTW.)

>

> Does anyone else have a good solution for this problem?

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>

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