Creating and Saving MSG files

Aspose.Email supports creating Outlook message (MSG) files. This article explains how to:

  • Create MSG.
  • Create MSG with attachments.
  • Create MSG with RTF body.
  • Save a message as draft.
  • Work with body compression.

Create and Save Outlook Messages

The MailMessage class has the Save() method that can save Outlook MSG files to a disk or a stream. The code snippet below shows how to create and save an Outlook message file:

  1. Initialize a MailMessage object eml using the MailMessage class.
  2. Set email properties like from, to, subject and body.
  3. Convert the eml object to outlookMsg using the MapiMessage.from_mail_message() method.
  4. Call the MapiMessage.Save() method to save the outlookMsg as an MSG file with the name “CreatingAndSavingOutlookMessages_out.msg” in the directory specified by dataDir.

Add Attachments to MSG Files

In the example above, we created a simple MSG file. Aspose.Email also supports saving message files with attachments. All you need to do is to add the attachments to the MailMessage instance. Add attachments by calling the add_attachment method on the MailMessage.Attachments collection. The code snippet below demonstrates how to create and configure an email message, add attachments, and then save it as an MSG file.

Create MSG Files with RTF Body

You can also create Outlook Message (MSG) files with rich text (RTF) bodies with Aspose.Email. The RTF body supports text formatting. Create one by setting the MailMessage.html_body property. When you convert a MailMessage instance into a MapiMessage instance, the HTML body is converted into RTF. This way, the formatting of the email body is preserved.

The following code snippet demonstrates how to create an Outlook MSG file with a Rich Text Format (RTF) body:

Save Messages in Draft Status

When someone starts composing an email but isn’t ready to send it, they can save it as a draft for later completion. This allows them to return and finish editing the email at a more convenient time. Aspose.Email supports saving email messages in draft status by setting a message flag. Below is the sample code to save an Outlook email message (MSG) as a draft.

Understand Body Compression in Outlook Messages

The RTF body compression method can be used to generate a smaller size MSG. However, this results in slower speed. To create messages with improved speed, set the use_body_compression flag to false. This flag, in turn, affects the created PSTs: smaller MSG files result in a smaller PST, and larger MSG files lead to slower PST creation.

Loading and Parsing MSG Files