Export Email Contents to a Local File

Saving email contents to a local file is useful when you need to archive messages, process them offline, or integrate email data into other systems without relying on server access. The components allow direct export of retrieved messages to disk with optional headers included.

To save email contents to a file, set the LocalFile property to the desired file path before retrieving the message. This instructs the component to write the message data directly to disk.

When using the POP component, you can include headers by setting IncludeHeaders to true before calling Retrieve:

pop1.LocalFile = "C:/temp/email.txt";
pop1.IncludeHeaders = true;
pop1.Retrieve();

When using the IMAP component, the same behavior is controlled via the IncludeHeaders configuration setting, and the message is retrieved using FetchMessageText:

imap1.LocalFile = "C:/temp/email.txt";
imap1.Config("IncludeHeaders=true");
imap1.FetchMessageText();