Python MAPI

[kyosohma at gmail.com]

On Jul 20, 1:48 pm, vasudevram <vasudev... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 20, 10:57 pm, kyoso... at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi,
>
> > I've been googling all over and can't find any good answers about this
> > problem. I would like to create some kind of MAPI interface with
> > Python such that when I open Microsoft Word (or another Office
> > program) and click File, Send To, Mail Recipient it opens a program I
> > wrote in Python and uses it to send the email rather than Outlook.
>
> > The closest I've come is finding the registry key HKLM\Software\Clients
> > \Mail which seems to control the default email client. I did figure
> > out how to redirect mailto directives on websites to my program
> > successfully, but this is a whole 'nother ballgame.
>
> > Any suggestions are welcome. I am considering writing some VBA hooks
> > in Office Apps in question, but would prefer to avoid that.
>
> > Thanks!
>
> > Mike
>
> > P.S. Currently using Python 2.4, wxPython 2.8.3 (for GUI) on Windows
> > XP Pro.
>
> Hi,
>
> 1: I don't know much about Windows APIs, but am currently reading the
> "Windows Internals" book. Got this idea from it:
>
> Go tohttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
> and check out the SysInternals utilities there. The book says that you
> can use some of them to "spy" on what an app is doing - what registry
> keys it is reading/writing, lots of other OS-level calls it makes as
> it runs. Digging around and using some of these utilities to check out
> what an Office app does when you use it to send mail, might help you
> figure out a way to do what you want.
>
> 2. Try looking for registry entries specific to Office Apps, and look
> under those subtrees for likely email-related entries to modify (if
> you haven't tried that already). I guess you already know that
> fiddling with the registry can be risky and can crash your system, so
> take backups, etc.
>
> Using COM via Python may also help - again, some digging required. You
> probably already have the PyWin32 Python extensions for Windows COM
> (earlier called win32all - seehttp://wiki.python.org/moin/Win32All) -
> if not, its available here:
>
> http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.4.4/
> (scroll down the page for the link)
>
> Vasudev Ramwww.dancingbison.com
> jugad.livejournal.com
> sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf

Thanks for the ideas...I am already monitoring the registry to see
what happens when I switch between two email clients. In this case, I
am switching between Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird 2. The pertinent
registry files are as follows:

# changes which email client to use
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail]

# obviously changes the .eml file association
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.eml]

# haven't the fogiest idea what this does, if anything
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{29F458BE-8866-11D5-
A3DD-00B0D0F3BAA7}]

# change mailto functionality
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Thunderbird\\thunderbird.exe,0"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Thunderbird\\thunderbird.exe\" -osint -
compose \"%1\""

I assume you're referring to "Process Monitor", which is a really cool
tool. Maybe it'll help, but I usually can't get it to filter out
enough of the noise to make the output useful. I'll give it a go
nonethless.

I am running all my tests in a VM, so I really don't care if the
registry gets hosed at this point.

Thanks again,

Mike