User Guide

User Manual:

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Windows MBox Viewer
User Manual 1.0.3.1
Table of Contents
1 Modification History.......................................................................................................................3
2 What is new and what changed in version 1.0.3.1..........................................................................3
2.1 What is new..................................................................................................................................3
2.2 What changed...............................................................................................................................3
3 Feedback..........................................................................................................................................4
4 Overview.........................................................................................................................................4
5 Installation.......................................................................................................................................4
6 Running MBox viewer....................................................................................................................5
6.1 Argument List Summary..............................................................................................................5
6.2 Setting Options from GUI............................................................................................................5
6.3 Basic Use Case.............................................................................................................................6
6.4 Message Window Position...........................................................................................................8
6.5 Single Mail Context Menu...........................................................................................................9
6.5.1 File Names...............................................................................................................................10
6.6 Multiple Selected Mails Context Menu......................................................................................10
6.6.1 File Names...............................................................................................................................11
6.7 Conversation Mail Group Context Menu...................................................................................11
6.7.1 File Names...............................................................................................................................12
6.8 Mail Archive Context menu.......................................................................................................12
6.8.1 Print to CSV File Dialog.........................................................................................................13
6.9 Mail Attachments........................................................................................................................13
6.9.1 Attachment context menu........................................................................................................14
6.10 Inline Image Cache...................................................................................................................14
6.11 Picture Viewer..........................................................................................................................15
6.12 Mail Navigation........................................................................................................................16
6.13 Mail Sorting..............................................................................................................................16
6.14 Dynamic Column Resize..........................................................................................................16
6.15 Mail Searching..........................................................................................................................17
6.15.1 Basic Find..............................................................................................................................17
6.15.1.1 Find All Occurrences Option..............................................................................................18
6.15.2 Advanced Find.......................................................................................................................19
6.15.3 Search Reliability..................................................................................................................20
6.15.4 Special Search Key................................................................................................................20
6.15.5 Search Progress Bar...............................................................................................................20
6.15.6 Search Performance...............................................................................................................20
6.16 Refreshing Archive Tree Window............................................................................................21
6.17 Language (Character Sets) Support..........................................................................................21
6.17.1 Message Window...................................................................................................................21
6.17.1.1 Header of Message Window...............................................................................................22
6.17.2 Summary Window.................................................................................................................23
6.18 Mail List Auditing....................................................................................................................23
6.18.1 Mail List Archiving...............................................................................................................24
6.18.2 Merging Multiple Mail Archives...........................................................................................25
6.19 Mail Printing Overview............................................................................................................25
6.19.1 Mail Printing to CSV Spreasheet file....................................................................................26
6.19.2 Mail Printing to TEXT file....................................................................................................26
6.19.3 Mail Printing to HTML file...................................................................................................26
6.19.4 Mail Printing to PDF printer..................................................................................................26
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6.19.5 Mail Printing to PDF file.......................................................................................................27
6.19.6 Mail Printing to PDF files by Power Users...........................................................................28
6.19.7 Print Directory Structure.......................................................................................................28
7 Windows Code Page Identifiers....................................................................................................29
7.1 Handling Unknown Code Page Names......................................................................................33
1 Modification History
Revision Date Comments
1.0 February 28, 2018 Initial Release
< 1.0.3.1 See ReadMe.markdown 1.0.3.1 included with the release
package.
1.0.3.1 April 29, 2019 See the section “What is new and what changed in version
1.0.3.1”.
2 What is new and what changed in version 1.0.3.1
2.1 What is new
1. Added capability to merge/concatenate multiple archive files and remove duplicate mails.
2. Added option to print mails directly to PDF file without user interaction by leveraging
external HTML to PDF converter tools such as Chrome Browser or free wkhtmltopdf.
3. Added option to print each mail to a separate PDF file.
4. Added scripts to merge per mail separate PDF files to support printing large number of
mails to a single PDF file.
5. Added vertical bar in the first column to mark mails that are also on the User Selected
Mails list.
6. Added handling of CTRL-A to select all mails in the Summary Window. Mail Summary
Window must be selected first.
7. Added option to insert Page Break after each mail when printing multiple mails to single
Text or PDF file.
8. Added option to remove/add the background color to the mail header.
9. Added options to export CC and BCC header fields to CSV spreadsheet file.
10. Added CC and BCC fields to a search criteria in Advanced Find dialog.
11. Updated Help options.
2.2 What changed
1. Changed directory structure for printing to files.
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3 Feedback
To help to improve MBox Viewer, please post reviews what works and what doesn’t, create bug
reports and request for enhancements. Provide as many details as possible, such as country,
screenshots, etc.
4 Overview
MBox Viewer (or mboxview) is Windows GUI based program to view mbox files such as
Thunderbird Archives, Google mail archives or simple Eml files.
The mbox viewer is a simple but quite powerful email viewer that supports the following features:
1. large file support > 4Gb
2. fast parsing of mbox archives
3. quick access to all attachments
4. preview picture attachments
5. zoom in/out a picture
6. export of single mail in Eml
7. print all or multiple selected mails to CSV or Text or HTML or PDF files or send to PDF printer
8. print single mail to Text or HTML or PDF file or send to PDF printer
9. group all related mails as conversations
10. print mail conversation/related mails group to CSV or Text or HTML or PDF file or send to
PDF printer
11. open single or multiple selected mails or group of related mails in a browser
12. find user defined text in mail’s message and highlight all occurrences
13. search the date, subject, sender, cc, bcc, message text and text appendix
14. sort by date, from, to, subject, size and conversation groups
15. support for mail’s header fields and body encoded with different character sets
16. support for mail list editing capability to enable users to compose mail list by merging results of
multiple searches and/or by merging one or more user selected mails.
17. support to set Message Window position to Bottom, Right or Left
18. ability to merge/concatenate multiple archive files and remove duplicate mails.
5 Installation
The executable and the source code can be downloaded from Sourceforge or Github.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mbox-viewer/files/
https://github.com/eneam/mboxviewer/releases
Download the executable package, the latest mbox-viewer.exe-v1.0.3.1.zip, to the working
directory and unzip. This will create the mbox-viewer.exe-v1.0.3.1 directory and the stand-alone
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mboxview.exe executable, User Guide and scripts sub-directory in that directory. No administrator
privileges are required.
6 Running MBox viewer
The mboxview program can be executed by double clicking the executable from the explorer
window or from the command line by typing the command name and argument list to it.
6.1 Argument List Summary
The mboxview accept the following command line options.
-FOLDER=folderPath – the full path to the folder containing one or more mbox or eml files.
Persists in the registry across multiple runs.
-MAIL_FILE=fileName – full file path or just file name of mbox/eml file to load. If the full path is
not specified, the full path is created from the folderPath and the fileName. Doesn’t persist in the
registry across multiple runs.
-EXPORT_EML=y|n – enables or disables automatic export of eml files generated from mbox
archive. Improves traversing performance of mail if set to ‘n”. Persists in the registry across
multiple runs.
-PROGRESS_BAR_DELAY=seconds – search progress bar is activated when the search duration
lasts longer than the value set for PROGRESS_BAR_DELAY. If set to -1, the progress bar is
disables. Default value is set to 1 seconds. Persists in the registry across multiple runs.
If desired, instead of typing directly desired command line options, a simple .cmd or .bat file can be
created for convenience and run from the explorer.
6.2 Setting Options from GUI
The EXPORT_EML and PROGRESS_BAR_DELAY values can be changed on the fly at any
time from GUI.
Click on the “File” to open the drop menu and then select the “Options” option. The below dialog
will be presented. Set the desired values followed by OK button.
Note that if exporting of EML files is disabled, you can still export the eml file for the selected mail
by selecting “View EML” under the “View” drop menu.
Two options, “Show Charsets” and “Set Character Sets for Header Fields”, can help to properly
display header fields in the Message Window. See 6.17.1.1 for additional details.
The “Picture Viewer” check box enables/disables the dialog option to preview the picture
attachments, see 6.11 for additional details.
The “Time” option allows to display time as Local or GMT.
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6.3 Basic Use Case
Double click of the mboxview to start the viewer. The picture below shows the screen created by
the mboxview after few steps performed by a user. Mail Archive, Summary and Message windows
are initially blank after start-up. Steps to load a mail archive and display the content are described
next.
1. Click on the “File” to open the drop menu and then select the “Select folder...” option.
Browse to the folder containing one or more mbox and/or eml mail archive files and select
it. All valid mail archive files will appear in the Mail Archive Tree window.
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Mail Archive
Tree Window
Mail Summary List
Window
Mail Message/Body
Window
Header of Message Window
Mail List Auditing Dialog Bar
2. Left click on one of the archive files to load all mails within that archive. Progress bar will
appear and automatically close after the selected archive is fully processed. Mail header
information of each email will appear in the Summary window. Note that parsing of very
large archive file may take some time since the mail archives are text files and every
character has to be examine one by one.
However, subsequent loading of mails is done from the index file created by the mboxview
during the initial parsing of the archive file and is much faster. The created index file
contains content meta data of each mail in the archive file. i.e. the mail header information
and the position of each mail within the mail file for quick access to the mail message/body.
The index files have the .mboxview suffix.
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3. Left Click on one of the mails in the Summary window to show the Message/Body of that
email in the Message window. The mail retrieval state, total number of mails in the archive
and the position of the selected mail within the archive is shown on the status bar. Opening a
heperlinks within an external browser is recommended since running Java or scripts or
ActiveX controls is disabled in the internal browser to improve security.
6.4 Message Window Position
Message Window position can be set to Bottom, Right or Left via View→Message Window option.
After setting new position, mbox viewer needs to be restarted for the change to take effect.
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When position is set to Right or Left, the mail address format will change to show mail name only
or mail address if the name is missing.
By default Message Window position is set to Bottom.
6.5 Single Mail Context Menu
Right Click on a selected mail in the Summary Window to open the context menu as shown below.
The “Print to” context menu allows to print the selected mail to Text, HTML or PDF file or to send
to the user selected PDF printer.
The “Open in Browser” menu option will open the selected mail in the external default Web
Browser.
The “Find Text” option allows to find user specified text and highlight all occurrences in the
Message window.
The “Find Advanced” options will start the advanced search dialog and pre-populate From, To and
Subject fields from the mail.
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6.5.1 File Names
User can configure file name pattern to apply when printing single mail by selecting File -> Print
Config dialog. Pattern is composed from Date, Time, From, To, Subject and Unique Id fields. Only
alpha numeric characters are selected from the Subject, other characters will be replaced with the
underscore.
Files will be saved in the FolderHousingMailArchives/PrintCache/MailArchiveName folder, where
MailArchiveName denotes the archive file name without the .mbox extension.
User must enter the target file name manually when printing to PDF printer, i.e. when selecting
Print to → Printer mail option or when printing mail to pdf file from the browser.
Print Config dialog allows users to configure the maximum length of created file name. The
maximum file path length supported by Windows is 260 characters for non Unicode applications.
Therefore the file name will be limited to (260 – length of FolderHousingMailArchives/PrintCache/
MailArchiveName/MailFileName) path. User can set wanted file name length limit and the mbox
viewer will adjust the configured length if needed.
6.6 Multiple Selected Mails Context Menu
Multiple mails can be selected using Windows standard method, i.e. Left click followed by
Shift+LeftClick or CTRL+LeftClick or CTRL+A.
Right Click on a multiple selected email in the Summary Window to open the context menu as
shown below.
The “Print Selected Mails to” context menu option allows to print the selected mails to single Text
or HTML or CSV or PDF files or send to the user selected PDF printer. See also 6.19.6 “Mail
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Printing to PDF files by Power Users” section.
The “Open Selected Mails in Browser” menu option will open the selected mails in the external
default Web Browser.
6.6.1 File Names
User can’t configure file name pattern to apply when printing multiple mails to a single file. The file
name is automatically composed from the archive file name with appropriate extension, i.e. .txt
or .htm or .csv or .pdf.
Files will be saved in the FolderHousingMailArchives/PrintCache/MailArchiveName folder, where
MailArchiveName denotes the archive file name without the mbox extension.
User must enter the target file name manually when printing to PDF printer, i.e. when selecting
Print Selected mails to → Printer mail option or when printing mail to PDF file from the browser.
6.7 Conversation Mail Group Context Menu
All Mails must be sorted by the conversation first before context options can be processed. See 6.13
section.
Right Click on any mail within the selected conversation group in the Summary Window to open
the context menu as shown in 6.5 section.
The “Print Related Mails to” context menu option allows to print the selected group of mails
(conversation) to Text, HTML, CSV or PDF file or to send to the user selected PDF printer.
The “Open Related Mails in Browser” menu option will open the selected mail group in the external
default Web Browser.
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6.7.1 File Names
See 6.6.1 section.
6.8 Mail Archive Context menu
Right click on the active mail archive under the Mail Archive Tree Window to open the context
menu as shown below.
The context menu allows to print all email to single CSV, Text , HTML and PDF files. The name of
the created file will be created based on the archive file name with the .csv or .txt or .html or .pdf
suffix in the FolderHousingMailArchives/PrintCache/MailArchiveName folder, where
MailArchiveName denotes the archive file name without the mbox extension. NOTE that mails will
be printed according to the sort order in the summary window.
Size of HTML file can be very large and opening in most of the browsers can be problematic.
Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome browser seem to perform best as far as handling large HTML
files.
HTML to Text conversion was added in 1.0.2.8 to handle mails with HTML text block and no Plain
text. Conversion can be quite slow and print time could increase significantly compared to 1.0.2.7
in case the large number of conversions is required. Progress bar was added to indicate progress,
possibly slow progress.
Printing to single PDF file is the most time consuming. See also 6.19.6 “Mail Printing to PDF files
by Power Users” sections for larger scale printing to single PDF file.
All mails of the active archive can be sorted by date, from, to subject, size and conversations in the
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Summary Window. This feature is the same as the left click on the selected column in the Summary
Window.
The “Properties” option shows the archive file location, size and email count
The “Refresh Index File” option will perform fresh parse of the archive file if needed.
6.8.1 Print to CSV File Dialog
When printing selected mail archive or selected set of mails by a user to CSV file, user can select
what fields to export, the date format and one of two time zones.
Option to normalize content encoding is also available. Default encoding is set to UTF-8 and should
not be changed except possibly in special cases.
The “Limit Message to N Characters” value is set by default to 32500 characters and it should not
be set higher otherwise Excel and LibreOffice will complain that the character count limit per
spreadsheet cell was exceeded. LibreOffice will gracefully handle the text overflow, Excel
spreadsheet will get corrupted.
6.9 Mail Attachments
Mail attachments are shown at the bottom of the Message window. Note that the “*’ character may
appear in the first column for the associated mail to indicate presence of associated attachments. To
open location of attachments, double click on the mail in the Summary window or select
“View”→”ViewEML” menu option. Temporary folder will open containing all attachments for the
email. Use standard Windows applications to view attachments.
You can also double left click to view attachments. Picture attachments will be viewed in the
Picture Viewer (if configured in the global Options) and other file types will be viewed by the
associated default Windows applications.
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6.9.1 Attachment context menu
Right click on the selected attachment to open the context menu. The context menu allows to open
or print the attachment by the associated default application. You can also open the folder housing
the attachment. The selected attachment will be highlighted in the folder.
6.10 Inline Image Cache
The mboxview will create the cache of inline images to support images embedded directly into the
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mail body/message. The cache is created during the initial parsing of the mail archive file. Separate
cache sub-folder is created per each archive file (assuming at least one inline image was found) in
the FolderHousingMailArchives/ImageCache folder. If the inline image cache is missing for any
reason, try to refresh the index file by selecting “Refresh Index File” context option on the
respective file archive.
6.11 Picture Viewer
Double left Click on any attachment to start Picture Viewer dialog, example below.
The Picture Viewer supports files with the png, jpg, jpeg, jpe, gif, bmp, ico, tif, tiff, jfif, emf, wmf,
dib suffixes.
The NEXT and PREV controls enable user to browse all picture/image attachments associated with
the selected email. You can select specific attachment to be displayed. You can later browse through
all picture attachments.
The ROTATE control allow to rotate clockwise the current/visible picture.
The ZOOM control allows to zoom in/out picture. Click on ZOOM to enable/disable zooming.
Slide to right to enlarge an image, slide to left to shrink. Enlarged image can be dragged using the
left and scroll buttons of the mouse. Click ZOOM to disable zooming and reset the image to
original size.
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The PRINT control allow to print via default application.
The Picture Viewer is enabled by default but it can be disabled via FILE→Options dialog. Setting
persists in the Registry across multiple runs.
All attachments are also accessible by double clicking on the selected mail in the Summary window
or by selecting “View”→”ViewEML” menu option.
6.12 Mail Navigation
Click on a specific mail in the Summary window and use UP, DOWN keys to move to the next or
previous mail respectively.
Use HOME key to jump to the first mail. Use END key to jump to the last mail.
6.13 Mail Sorting
The Summary window is divided into 6 columns: attachment indicator, date, from, to, subject and
mail size. Each column can be sorted by clicking on the column title. Subsequent click on the same
column title will reverse the sorting rule. By clicking on the first column title, emails are sorted by
conversations and mark by different colour as shown below.
Mail can also be sorted via the mail archive context menu or by selecting “File”->“Sort By” menu
option.
6.14 Dynamic Column Resize
Columns in the Summary windows are automatically resized when the window is resized.
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However, if columns are resized manually, some of the columns may no longer be present in visible
area/window.
You may need to use the scroll bar to see missing columns, otherwise maximize and then restore the
window to see all columns within the Summary window again.
6.15 Mail Searching
Mbox viewer supports two search options, i.e. basic Find and Advanced Find.
The basic Find option allows users to specify single keyword for searching across header fields,
mail text and attachments.
The advanced Find option allows user to specify keyword per each header field, mail text and
attachments.
6.15.1 Basic Find
The basic Find option allows users to specify single keyword/string for searching across header
fields, mail text and attachments.
Users can configure the search scope by selecting all or subset of the from, to, subject, message and
text attachments options. The search succeeds if the specified keyword matches any of the checked
fields.
Click the “Edit” drop menu and select “Find” option to configure and start the search. Alternatively
the CTRL+F will also present the search dialog.
The search dialog box allows user to specify the search string, whether to match the whole word,
whether the search is case sensitive, configure the search scope, the start and end dates to consider
for filtering, the Next/Previous search direction and whether to highlight all occurrences of the
matched text.
Note that the Next search start with the oldest email while the Previous search starts with the latest.
The search logic simple, i.e. mail is considered a match if the search string is found in any of the
checked fields in that mail.
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To repeat the search in order to find the next matching mail, click the “Edit” drop menu and select
“Find again” option, or select F3 key.
If “Find again” or F3 key is selected without prior “Find” or CTRL+F, the search dialog box will
be presented to a user.
6.15.1.1 Find All Occurrences Option
User can check “Find all occurrences” to find all matching mails. Automatic highlighting of all
keyword occurrences is not supported in this case. Matched mails will be displayed under the Find
Mails List and the corresponding button in the dialog bar will be highlighted. User can left click on
All Mails button to switch mail list back to All Mails.
The basic Find can also be run while in the Find Mails list and while in User Selected Mails list
when the list is enabled.
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6.15.2 Advanced Find
The advanced Find option allows user to specify different keyword per each header field, mail text
and attachments.
Users can configure the search scope by selecting all or subset of the from, to, subject, cc, bcc,
message and text attachments options.
Click the “Edit” drop menu and select “Find Advanced” option to configure and start the search.
The Find Advanced is also available as menu option for the selected mail. Right click on the mail
and select Find Advanced option. Mbox viewer will pre-populate From, To and Subject fields in this
case.
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Only checked fields are use by matching logic and search strings are ignored if present unless field
is checked.
The search logic is hard-coded for the most common case and is as follow:
(unidirectional or bidirectional and operator of From and To) and Subject and CC and BCC and
(Message or Attachments)
More complex searching can be achieved by leveraging User Selected mails list. User can run
multiple advanced searches and merge results into User Selected Mails list.
6.15.3 Search Reliability
Searching may not work as expected in all cases due to different character sets on input and in the
mails.
Base64 or “quoted-printable” text content blocks and text attachments are first decoded before the
search to eliminate false negative results.
Searching of the header fields is performed on the received raw data.
Raw mail data may contain plain text and/or html text blocks. Both encode the same/similar
content. If the mail contains plain text blocks, only plain text will be searched. If the mail doesn’t
contain any plain text blocks, the html text blocks will be searched.
False positive results may happen when searching text/html content blocks since the html tags are
not ignored when searching. The search string may match one of the html tags and result in false
positive match.
If possible, use ASCII characters only to compose the search string.
6.15.4 Special Search Key
The single character ‘*’, i.e. the star character can be specified as the search string to enable
traversing the subset of mails between the start and end dates.
6.15.5 Search Progress Bar
Search progress bar displays the progress along the configured search string and enables user to
cancel the search is so desired. The progress bar is not created unless a given search duration lasts
longer than the delay time controlled by -PROGRESS_BAR_DELAY command line option or
specified via GUI. Default value is 1 second.
6.15.6 Search Performance
Searching of header fields performs best since all fields reside in the memory.
Searching of messages and text attachments may take some time for very large files, say larger than
10-20 Gbytes. Search requires to read the content blocks from the email file and decode the content
when required. Worse case scenario is when the specified search string is not present in the mail
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archive. When activated, the search progress bar shows the configured search string and enables
user to cancel the search is so desired.
Note that when searching of message and text attachments is configured, all mails will be sorted by
date first, except when sorted by conversations, to maximize search performance.
6.16 Refreshing Archive Tree Window
If an additional mbox or eml file is placed in the already selected folder, the Archive Tree window
needs to be refreshed to see the new additions. This can be done by selecting “Refresh” option
under the “File” drop menu or by clicking on the button showed below.
6.17 Language (Character Sets) Support
6.17.1 Message Window
Different languages (character sets) are properly supported in the Message Window. This is thanks
to the Microsoft Web Browser emulation/control class integrated into the mboxview. The mboxview
generates the htm file from the mail’s body and Web Browser displays the generated file in the
Message window.
Display may not be correct if the character set for the mail’s body is not defined in the mail. To
resolve the incorrect display, you can try to apply different encoding by right clicking within the
window, selecting “encoding” and “more” options to apply different language.
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6.17.1.1 Header of Message Window
The text of the mail header fields is displayed correctly as long as the corresponding field encoding
type is present in the email.
Two global options can be used to address incorrect field presentation in the Message Header in
case the field encoding is not present in the email. Missing field encoding type may or may not be a
problem. It should not be a problem if the default/local character set installed on your computer
matches the original encoding of the header fields. It might be an issue if you are receiving emails
from different countries.
As shown below, you can see all encoding/character sets applied to the header fields by enabling
“Show Charsets” option. To enable, select “Options” from the “File” drop menu and enable “Show
Charsets”.
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If the field text presentation is not correct, you can try to configure character set (or so called code
page according to Microsoft terminology) for the selected header fields and see if that helps. Per
field code pages can be configured via Options dialog box. Note that the user provided encoding
doesn't override encoding in the email, if present, which is denoted by the code page greater than
zero. Code Page set to zero indicates missing or unknown character set.
If you change the code page value(s) in the Options Dialog box, you need to refresh the selected
email by going up and down (or down and up).
All Windows supported code pages are listed in chapter 7 or can be viewed in the external Browser
by selecting “View”→”View Code Page Ids”.
The character set information appears after the field title and is formatted as “(character set
name/code page)”. The ‘*” star character is appended after the code page if the user specified code
is applied). Example “(UTF-8/65001*)”.
The character set information after the “Date:’ title shows the local/default character set installed on
your computer.
6.17.2 Summary Window
Mail header fields are displayed correctly as long as the corresponding field encoding type is
present in the email.
6.18 Mail List Auditing
Mail list auditing capability enables users to compose mail list from all mails by merging results of
multiple searches and/or by merging one or more user selected mails.
To support list auditing, the Mbox Viewer maintains 3 internal mail lists:
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•All Mails list is populated from the selected archive file under the Mail Tree.
•Find Mails list is populated by the search results. User can run Find Advanced dialog or set
the Find All Occurrences option in the Find dialog.
•User Selected Mails list is composed by a user from the mails in the All Mails and Find
Mails lists. Mails on All Mails and Find Mails lists are marked by the red vertical bar in the
first column if they are also on User Selected Mails list.
Each internal mail list has associated button in the dialog bar located next to the tool bar. When a
particular mail list is shown in the Mail Summary Window, associated button is highlighted.
Access to the User Selected Mails list is disabled upon startup and the associated Button gray out. It
can be enabled by the user to perform simple list auditing if desired by selecting View->User
Selected Mail List to enable/disable.
When User Selected Mails list is enabled, additional mail menu options will also be enabled such as
Copy Selected Mails to User Selected Mails.
Content of the User Selected Mails list is controlled by the user. User can merge search results with
the content of the User Selected List.
User can run the search multiples time and merge results multiple times with the User Selected List.
Search results can be pruned before merging.
In addition, user has an option to select/highlight one or more mails in the Summary Mail Window
and copy to the User Selected Mails list.
Standard Windows method is used to select and highlight multiple mails, i.e. Shift+Left Click and
CTRL+Left Click.
Merging/copying process will not create duplicate mails in the User Selected List.
User can select and highlight one or more mails in the Summary Mail Window and remove from the
active list. Mails can't be removed from the All Mails list.
All Mails list content persists until new mail archive is selected.
Find Mails list content persists until new search or when All Mails list is invalidated.
User Selected Mails list content persists until cleared by the user or when All Mails list is
invalidated.
6.18.1 Mail List Archiving
Find Mails list and User Selected Mails list content can be saved to new mbox archive files.
Archive file will be created in the same folder as the All Mails main archive.
Archive file created from the Find Mails list will be created by appending _FIND suffix to the base
name of the main archive file name.
The _USER suffix will be appended when creating archive file from the User Selected Mails list.
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For example, if the main mbox archive file from gmail is called "All mail Including Spam and
Trash.11.09.2018.mbox", then created archive file will be named "All mail Including Spam and
Trash.11.09.2018_USER.mbox."
When creating archive file for User Selected Mails list, the mbox viewer will also create file with
the list of all mails for that archive, for example "All mail Including Spam and
Trash.11.09.2018_USER.mbox.mboxlist."
The mail list file allows user to reload the last archived mail list into the User Select Mails. Reload
can be requested at any time including after restart of the mbox viewer.
After mbox viewer is restarted or when User Selected Mails List is empty, User Selected Mails list
can be restored when All Mails list is active.
When User Selected Mails list is active and not empty, it can be reloaded by a user.
6.18.2 Merging Multiple Mail Archives
Multiple archives can be concatenated into a single archive using "File -> Merge Archive Files"
option. This is useful if you need to analyse multiple mail views, provided as separate archive files,
derived from the same archive file.
After merging is completed, select "File -> Refresh" to request the mbox viewer to discover new
archive.
In order to remove duplicate mails from the concatenated file:
1. Select the created archive.
2. Select "View -> User Selected Mails" to enable User Select Mails list.
3. Right click on any mail to select "Copy All into User Selected Mails" option to copy all
mails into User Selected Mails list.
4. Click on the "User Selected Mails" button to select User Select Mails list.
5. Right click on any mail to select "Remove Duplicate Mails" option to remove duplicate
mails from User Select Mails list.
6. Mails are considered duplicate if the Date, From, To header fields and unique message ID
generated by the mail provider match.
7. Select "Save as Mail Archive file" option to save mails on the User Selected Mails list.
8. Select "File -> Refresh" to discover new no duplicate mails archive file by the mbox viewer.
9. You may want to rename the default name assigned to the archive file before the above step.
6.19 Mail Printing Overview
Mbox Viewer supports printing of all, single or multiple mails to CSV, Text, HTML, PDF files and
to PDF printer. Mails can also be printed to PDF from any Web Browser by opening mails printed
to HTML files.
By default all, single or multiple mails are printed to single CSV, Text, HTML and PDF files
without any additional configuration or manual steps. However there is a limit how many mails can
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effectively be printed to a single file. Option is provided to print mails to separate files to scale to
larger number of mails.
The next sections below will cover these limitations and alternate solutions.
6.19.1 Mail Printing to CSV Spreasheet file
By default, Mbox Viewer supports printing of all mails or selected group of mails to single CSV
file. All mails can be printed to single CSV file but a particular Spreadsheet tool may limit the
maximum supported size of the spreadsheet file.
User can select and print groups of mails to separate CVS files as a work around. There is no option
to automatically split all mails into configurable number of mail groups for printing to separate
CSV files.
6.19.2 Mail Printing to TEXT file
By default Mbox Viewer supports printing of all, single or selected group of mails to single Text
file. All mails can be printed to single TEXT file but a particular Text viewer tool may limit the
maximum supported size of the text file.
User can select and print groups of mails to separate Text files as a work around. There is no option
to automatically split all mails into configurable number of mail groups for printing to separate Text
files
6.19.3 Mail Printing to HTML file
By default Mbox Viewer supports printing of all mails, single or selected group of mails to single
HTML file. Mails can also be printed to a separate per mail HTML file for further processing as
described in “Mail Printing to PDF” 6.19.5 section and “Mail Printing to PDF files by Power
Users” 6.19.6 section.
All archive mails can be printed to single HTML file but HTML viewer tools/Web Browsers may
not be able to process large HTML files, become very slow or completely overloaded.
User can select and print groups of mails to separate HTML files as a work around. There is no
option to automatically split all mails into configurable number of mail groups for printing to
separate HTML files.
There is no hard rule how many mails can be printed to a single HTML file and viewed by a Web
Browser. It depends on the size and content (such as heavy graphics) of mails. It should be doable to
print up to a couple of thousands small to medium size text mails to a single HTML file for further
processing.
6.19.4 Mail Printing to PDF printer
Mbox Viewer supports printing of all, single or selected group of mails to PDF printer.
Printing to PDF printer relies on Microsoft HTML Document object to print its content. First,
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Mbox Viewer will print mails to a single HTML file, then it will load this file into HTML
Document object and request the object to print itself.
The limitations as far as the maximum number of mails that can be printed are described in the
"Printing Mails to HTML file" section.
The "File -> Print Config -> Page Setup" dialog option allows users to control the page title, header,
footer and background color.
By default user is prompted to select PDF printer for printing mails. If the PDF printer is configured
as the default printer, user can set "File -> Print Config -> Do Not Prompt" dialog option to skip the
printer prompt step.
6.19.5 Mail Printing to PDF file
Mbox Viewer supports multiple ways to print all, single or multiple mails to PDF file. All methods
convert HTML files, created first from mails by the Mbox Viewer, to PDF format.
By default all, single or selected mails are printed to a single HTML file and then converted to PDF
format. The default method limits the number of mails that can be effectively printed to single
HTML file as noted in previous sections. More scalable method for is described in “Mail Printing to
PDF files by Power Users” 6.19.6 section.
Mbox Viewer supports an option to print mails directly to PDF file without any user interaction.
Direct printing to PDF file invokes external application to convert HTML files to PDF. By default
the standard Google Chrome browser in so called headless mode is invoked to perform conversion.
The second option is provided to leverage free wkhtmltopdf application to covert HTML to PDF.
Option to leverage the wkhtmltopdf is provided since the Chrome browser in the headless mode
doesn't support options to control the page title, header and footer and the background color. It also
enables users to run custom script with different HTML to PDF converter.
User can set "File -> Print Config -> Path To User Defined Script" to invoke HTML2PDF-single-
wkhtmltopdf.cmd script included in the release package. HTML2PDF-single-wkhtmltopdf.cmd
script creates PDF files with the right footer "Page Number of Total Pages" and no page Title and
Header. The script can be customized by users if desired.
The wkhtmltopdf can be downloaded from wkhtmltopdf.org downloads.
The wkhtmltopdf command line options are documented in wkhtmltopdf.org usage.
User can replicate HTML2PDF-single-wkhtmltopdf.cmd to a new file and customize to leverage
different converter possibly commercial. User will need to update "Path To User Defined Script" in
"File -> Print Config" dialog to point to new script path.
When printing to a single PDF file, user can set "File -> Print Config -> Page Break After Each
Mail" option to start each mail at new page.
User can unset "File -> Print Config -> Mail Hdr Background Color" option to remove color and
save on the ink when printing. Useful option when using Chrome browser to print.
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Lastly, HTML files can be open within Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc. Browser and printed to PDF file.
6.19.6 Mail Printing to PDF files by Power Users
Some users may need to print larger number of mails to a single PDF file. This is supported by
Mbox Viewer but one or multiple manual steps are required. User must first print all mails to
separate PDF files and then merge them into a single PDF file by running provided script.
In order to print mails to separate PDF files, user must first set "File -> Print Config -> Print mails
to separate files -> PDF" option. After that, using standard mail print to PDF options, user can print
all or large subset of mails to separate PDF files into sub-folder PDF_GROUP created by Mbox
Viewer.
Printing large number of mails to separate PDF files is time consuming. Depending on the size and
content of a single mail, it may take fraction of a second to create PDF file or tens of seconds.
PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script included in the release package can be used to merge PDF files.
PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script invokes free PDFBox java tool to merge PDF files. Free PDFBox
java tool can be downloaded from pdfbox.apache.org.
PDFBox command line tools usage example can be found in pdfbox.apache.org commandline tools.
Java 8 can must be installed and can be downloaded from jdk8-downloads.
PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script must be copied into the directory housing all per mail PDF files and
executed. PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script will create one or more merged PDF files in the
PDF_MERGE sub-folder. If more than one merged PDF file is created in the PDF_MERGE sub-
folder, PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script needs to be copied to that sub-folder and script executed
again. The above steps need to be repeated until PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script creates single PDF
file only.
Printing mails to separate PDF files can also be done offline. User must first set "File -> Print
Config -> Print mails to separate files -> HTML" option. After that, using standard mail print to
HTML options, user can print all or large subset of mails to separate HTML files into sub-folder
HTML_GROUP created by Mbox Viewer.
HTML2PDF-all-chrome.cmd or HTML2PDF-all-wkhtmltopdf.cmd script included in the release
package can then be used to convert HTML files to PDF files. One of these scripts must be copied
into the directory housing all per mail HTML files, i.e. HTML_GROUP, and executed. Created PDF
files can then be merged into a single PDF file using PDFMerge-pdfbox.cmd script as described
above.
6.19.7 Print Directory Structure
Mbox Viewer creates and manages several sub-directories in the directory that houses one or more
mail archive files.
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\MailArchiveFile1.mbox
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ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\MailArchiveFile2.mbox
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\ImageCache
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\ImageCache\MailArchiveFile1- target directory for image files, such as png, jpg, etc, embeded into mails
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\ImageCache\MailArchiveFile2
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1 - target directory for printing to single CSV, TEXT, HTML and PDF files
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1\PDF_GROUP - target directory for printing to separate PDF files
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1\PDF_GROUP\PDF_MERGE - target directory for merged PDF files
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1\PDF_GROUP\PDF_MERGE\PDF_MERGE - target directory for merged PDF files if
multiple merge steps are needed
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1\HTML_GROUP - target directory for printing to separate HTML files
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1\HTML_GROUP\PDF_MERGE - target directory for merged PDF files
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile1\HTML_GROUP\PDF_MERGE\PDF_MERGE - target directory for merged PDF files if
multiple merge steps are needed
ROOT_MAIL_DIRECTORY\PrintCache\MailArchiveFile2
Mbox Viewer also creates and manages temporary directory C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\
Temp\mboxview directory to store temporary files (attachments, eml and htm) created when a mail
is selected by the user.
7 Windows Code Page Identifiers
The table below shows the supported character sets/code pages by Windows platform. The list is
based on the following link.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd317756(v=vs.85).aspx
Code Page Name Display Name
37 IBM037 IBM EBCDIC (US-Canada)
437 IBM437 OEM United States
500 IBM500 IBM EBCDIC (International)
708 ASMO-708 Arabic (ASMO 708)
720 DOS-720 Arabic (DOS)
737 ibm737 Greek (DOS)
775 ibm775 Baltic (DOS)
850 ibm850 Western European (DOS)
852 ibm852 Central European (DOS)
855 IBM855 OEM Cyrillic
857 ibm857 Turkish (DOS)
858 IBM00858 OEM Multilingual Latin I
860 IBM860 Portuguese (DOS)
861 ibm861 Icelandic (DOS)
862 DOS-862 Hebrew (DOS)
863 IBM863 French Canadian (DOS)
864 IBM864 Arabic (864)
865 IBM865 Nordic (DOS)
866 cp866 Cyrillic (DOS)
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Code Page Name Display Name
869 ibm869 Greek , Modern (DOS)
870 IBM870 IBM EBCDIC (Multilingual Latin-2)
874 windows-874 Thai (Windows)
875 cp875 IBM EBCDIC (Greek Modern)
932 shift_jis Japanese (Shift-JIS)
936 gb2312 Chinese Simplified (GB2312)
949 ks_c_5601-1987 Korean
950 big5 Chinese Traditional (Big5)
1026 IBM1026 IBM EBCDIC (Turkish Latin-5)
1047 IBM01047 IBM Latin-1
1140 IBM01140 IBM EBCDIC (US-Canada-Euro)
1141 IBM01141 IBM EBCDIC (Germany-Euro)
1142 IBM01142 IBM EBCDIC (Denmark-Norway-Euro)
1143 IBM01143 IBM EBCDIC (Finland-Sweden-Euro)
1144 IBM01144 IBM EBCDIC (Italy-Euro)
1145 IBM01145 IBM EBCDIC (Spain-Euro)
1146 IBM01146 IBM EBCDIC (UK-Euro)
1147 IBM01147 IBM EBCDIC (France-Euro)
1148 IBM01148 IBM EBCDIC (International-Euro)
1149 IBM01149 IBM EBCDIC (Icelandic-Euro)
1200 utf-16 Unicode
1201 unicodeFFFE Unicode (Big-Endian)
1250 windows-1250 Central European (Windows)
1251 windows-1251 Cyrillic (Windows)
1252 Windows-1252 Western European (Windows)
1253 windows-1253 Greek (Windows)
1254 windows-1254 Turkish (Windows)
1255 windows-1255 Hebrew (Windows)
1256 windows-1256 Arabic (Windows)
1257 windows-1257 Baltic (Windows)
1258 windows-1258 Vietnamese (Windows)
1361 Johab Korean (Johab)
10000 macintosh Western European (Mac)
10001 x-mac-japanese Japanese (Mac)
10002 x-mac-chinesetrad Chinese Traditional (Mac)
10003 x-mac-korean Korean (Mac)
10004 x-mac-arabic Arabic (Mac)
10005 x-mac-hebrew Hebrew (Mac)
10006 x-mac-greek Greek (Mac)
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Code Page Name Display Name
10007 x-mac-cyrillic Cyrillic (Mac)
10008 x-mac-chinesesimp Chinese Simplified (Mac)
10010 x-mac-romanian Romanian (Mac)
10017 x-mac-ukrainian Ukrainian (Mac)
10021 x-mac-thai Thai (Mac)
10029 x-mac-ce Central European (Mac)
10079 x-mac-icelandic Icelandic (Mac)
10081 x-mac-turkish Turkish (Mac)
10082 x-mac-croatian Croatian (Mac)
12000 utf-32 Unicode (UTF-32)
12001 utf-32BE Unicode (UTF-32 Big-Endian)
20000 x-Chinese-CNS Chinese Traditional (CNS)
20001 x-cp20001 TCA Taiwan
20002 x-Chinese-Eten Chinese Traditional (Eten)
20003 x-cp20003 IBM5550 Taiwan
20004 x-cp20004 TeleText Taiwan
20005 x-cp20005 Wang Taiwan
20105 x-IA5 Western European (IA5)
20106 x-IA5-German German (IA5)
20107 x-IA5-Swedish Swedish (IA5)
20108 x-IA5-Norwegian Norwegian (IA5)
20127 us-ascii US-ASCII
20261 x-cp20261 T.61
20269 x-cp20269 ISO-6937
20273 IBM273 IBM EBCDIC (Germany)
20277 IBM277 IBM EBCDIC (Denmark-Norway)
20278 IBM278 IBM EBCDIC (Finland-Sweden)
20280 IBM280 IBM EBCDIC (Italy)
20284 IBM284 IBM EBCDIC (Spain)
20285 IBM285 IBM EBCDIC (UK)
20290 IBM290 IBM EBCDIC (Japanese katakana)
20297 IBM297 IBM EBCDIC (France)
20420 IBM420 IBM EBCDIC (Arabic)
20423 IBM423 IBM EBCDIC (Greek)
20424 IBM424 IBM EBCDIC (Hebrew)
20833 x-EBCDIC-KoreanExtended IBM EBCDIC (Korean Extended)
20838 IBM-Thai IBM EBCDIC (Thai)
20866 koi8-r Cyrillic (KOI8-R)
20871 IBM871 IBM EBCDIC (Icelandic)
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Code Page Name Display Name
20880 IBM880 IBM EBCDIC (Cyrillic Russian)
20905 IBM905 IBM EBCDIC (Turkish)
20924 IBM00924 IBM Latin-1
20932 EUC-JP Japanese (JIS 0208-1990 and 0212-1990)
20936 x-cp20936 Chinese Simplified (GB2312-80)
20949 x-cp20949 Korean Wansung
21025 cp1025 IBM EBCDIC (Cyrillic Serbian-Bulgarian)
21866 koi8-u Cyrillic (KOI8-U)
28591 iso-8859-1 Western European (ISO)
28592 iso-8859-2 Central European (ISO)
28593 iso-8859-3 Latin 3 (ISO)
28594 iso-8859-4 Baltic (ISO)
28595 iso-8859-5 Cyrillic (ISO)
28596 iso-8859-6 Arabic (ISO)
28597 iso-8859-7 Greek (ISO)
28598 iso-8859-8 Hebrew (ISO-Visual)
28599 iso-8859-9 Turkish (ISO)
28603 iso-8859-13 Estonian (ISO)
28605 iso-8859-15 Latin 9 (ISO)
29001 x-Europa Europa
38598 iso-8859-8-i Hebrew (ISO-Logical)
50220 iso-2022-jp Japanese (JIS)
50221 csISO2022JP Japanese (JIS-Allow 1 byte Kana)
50222 iso-2022-jp Japanese (JIS-Allow 1 byte Kana - SO/SI)
50225 iso-2022-kr Korean (ISO)
50227 x-cp50227 Chinese Simplified (ISO-2022)
51932 euc-jp Japanese (EUC)
51936 EUC-CN Chinese Simplified (EUC)
51949 euc-kr Korean (EUC)
52936 hz-gb-2312 Chinese Simplified (HZ)
54936 GB18030 Chinese Simplified (GB18030)
57002 x-iscii-de ISCII Devanagari
57003 x-iscii-be ISCII Bengali
57004 x-iscii-ta ISCII Tamil
57005 x-iscii-te ISCII Telugu
57006 x-iscii-as ISCII Assamese
57007 x-iscii-or ISCII Oriya
57008 x-iscii-ka ISCII Kannada
57009 x-iscii-ma ISCII Malayalam
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Code Page Name Display Name
57010 x-iscii-gu ISCII Gujarati
57011 x-iscii-pa ISCII Punjabi
65000 utf-7 Unicode (UTF-7)
65001 utf-8 Unicode (UTF-8)
7.1 Handling Unknown Code Page Names
In a few cases, mboxview will map unknown code names to the equivalent code names supported
by Windows.
Unknown Code Name Mapped To Code Name
gbk GB18030
cp1252 Windows-1252
ascii us-ascii
cp819 iso-8859-1
latin1 iso-8859-1
latin2 iso-8859-2
big-5 big5
SJIS shift_jis
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