How to save attachment from outlook using win32com.client in Python?

python email outlook win32com
lsheng picture lsheng · Mar 14, 2014 · Viewed 22.5k times · Source

Im trying to read email and download the attachment to my own folder using win32com module in Python, I stopped at getting the attachment object:

from win32com.client import Dispatch
import datetime as date

outlook = Dispatch("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace("MAPI")
inbox = outlook.GetDefaultFolder("6")
all_inbox = inbox.Items
val_date = date.date.today()

sub_today = 'Hi'
att_today = 'Attachment.xlsx'
for msg in all_inbox:
    if msg.Subject == sub_today:
        break

for att in msg.Attachments:
    if att.FileName == att_today:
        break

att.SaveAsFile('new.xlsx')
att.ExtractFile('new.xlsx')
open(att)    
att.WriteToFile('x')

None of the last 4 lines work...

>>> att.ExtractFile('new.xlsx')
raise AttributeError("%s.%s" % (self._username_, attr))
AttributeError: <unknown>.ExtractFile

>>> open(att) 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, instance found

>>> att.WriteToFile('x')
 raise AttributeError("%s.%s" % (self._username_, attr))
AttributeError: <unknown>.WriteToFile

att.SaveAsFile('new.xlsx') has no error, but there is no such file in the working directory. Seems that the line was just ignored...

Could anyone help? Thanks in advance!

Answer

lsheng picture lsheng · Mar 17, 2014

Just to update, I have solved this issue by claiming both dir and the file name itself in SaveAsFile:

att.SaveAsFile(os.getcwd() + '\\new.xlsx')

It is not like most threads I've seen here saying that you only need to put path in it. Actually both path and file name are needed.

Also, weirdly, you have to put os.getcwd() here since Python wouldn't recognize current running dir - in R, after we set working dir with getwd(), we are able to write to any file at this location.

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