Python: how to click on an opened outlook email (win32)

Question

I need to click on an opened outlook email, a specific approve link that says "Approve request".

I opened the wanted email correctly, but I can't click on the specific link. Here is the code:

import win32com.client

outlook=win32com.client.Dispatch("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace("MAPI")
inbox=outlook.GetDefaultFolder(6)

messages = inbox.Items
messages.Sort("[ReceivedTime]", Descending=True)

for i in range(100):
    message = messages.GetNext()
    print(""+message.Subject, str(message.ReceivedTime))
    if message.Subject == "Mail to approve request":
        message.Display(False)

    else:
        pass

What is the _approve_ button (do you have a screenshot) ? What is `text` and how should the button be shown? — hc_dev, Dec 27 '21 at 19:17

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 28 '21 at 20:59

You will need to parse the MailItem.HTMLBody property, extract the relevant link, launch the browser with that link.

Also, never loop through all items in a folder, use Items.Find/FindNext or Items.Restrict with a query like "[Subject]='Mail to approve request'"

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 28 '21 at 22:43

There are several ways to open a hyperlink programmatically in Python. The How to open a URL in python page explains possible scenarios. For example:

import os
os.system("start \"\" https://example.com")

Use the HTMLBody property which returns the a string representing the HTML body of the specified item. So, you may find the required URL programmatically by parsing the message body and execute it programmatically.

And, finally, to find items that correspond to your conditions use the Find/FindNext or Restrict methods of the Items class. Read more about them in the following articles:

See Filtering Items Using Query Keywords for building a search criteria string properly.

Also you may find the AdvancedSearch method of the Application class helpful. 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 this method in the Advanced search in Outlook programmatically: C#, VB.NET article.

Python: how to click on an opened outlook email (win32)

2 Answers2