Envelope Object

You can use the Envelope object to examine properties of messages located on the IMAP4 server.

Syntax

Envelope.property

Properties
AddressDelimiter	Specifies the delimiter to be used to separate individual items when returning e-mail addresses' or friendly names' strings.
BCCAddr	The e-mail addresses of the blind-carbon-copy recipients.
BodyStructure	A reference to the root BodyPartStructure object of the message structure tree. Can be Nothing.
CCAddr	The e-mail addresses of the carbon-copy recipients.
CCFriendlyName	The friendly names of the carbon-copy recipients.
Date	The date and time of the moment when the server received the message.
Flags	The flags set for the message.
FlagsAsString	All the flags (including non-standard ones) which are set for the message, as a string.
FromAddr	The e-mail address of the sender.
FromFriendlyName	The friendly name of the sender.
MessageID	The value of "Message-ID:" header of the message.
MessagePreview	A reference to the Message object which contains the partial message. Can be Nothing.
PureCCAddr	The e-mail addresses (with friendly names removed) of the carbon-copy recipients.
PureFromAddr	The e-mail address (with friendly name removed) of the sender.
PureToAddr	The e-mail addresses (with friendly names removed) of the primary recipients.
ReplyToAddr	The e-mail address of the entity specified to receive all replies to the message.
RFC822Date	The date and time as it's specified in "Date:" header of the message.
Size	The size of the entire message (in bytes).
Subject	The subject of the message.
ToAddr	The e-mail addresses of the primary recipients.
ToFriendlyName	The friendly names of the primary recipients.
UID	The Unique-ID (UID) of the message on the IMAP4 server.

Remarks

The Envelope object allows you to preview messages and examine their properties without overhead of downloading entire messages.

The Envelope object effectively replaces message headers widely used in the POP3-based e-mail solutions. With the IMAP4 envelopes, you have access to the extra information not available with the POP3 protocol such as the date and time of the moment when the server received the message (Date property).

If you need to examine certain message headers which are not exposed by the Envelope object (such as "X-Spam:"), you can still obtain the message headers via MessagePreview property. Also, this property can be used to preview some part of the message body.

Also, the Envelope object can expose the structure of the message parts via BodyStructure property. For instance, you can obtain the attachments filenames, or determine whether the message is HTML-formatted or just plain-text.

To obtain the Envelope object, either call RetrieveEnvelopes or RetrieveEnvelopesEx method of the IMAP4 object. These methods return the Envelopes collection of the Envelope objects.

Note: By default, BodyStructure and MessagePreview properties of the Envelope object are available because of additional information (and network traffic) required to set them. You must use RetrieveEnvelopesEx method if you want to have these properties set.

Example

The following example connects to the IMAP4 server, logs in certain e-mail account, selects Inbox folder, and displays the size for the first 5 messages.

Dim objIMAP4, objEnvelopes, objEnvelope

' Using Visual Basic to create object
Set objIMAP4 = CreateObject("MailBee.IMAP4")

' Using ASP to create object
' Set objIMAP4 = Server.CreateObject("MailBee.IMAP4")

' Unlock IMAP4 object
objIMAP4.LicenseKey = "put your license key here"

' Set IMAP4 server name
objIMAP4.ServerName = "mail.server.com"

' Set user credentials
objIMAP4.UserName = "jdoe"
objIMAP4.Password = "secret"

' Connect to the server and
' log in email account
If objIMAP4.Connect Then

  ' Select Inbox folder
  If objIMAP4.SelectMailbox("Inbox") Then

    ' Get envelopes for the first 5 messages
    Set objEnvelopes = _
      objIMAP4.RetrieveEnvelopes(1, 5, False)

    ' Check for errors
    If Not objIMAP4.IsError Then
      For Each objEnvelope In objEnvelopes
        ' Display the message size
        MsgBox "Size = " & objEnvelope.Size
        ' In ASP, use Response.Write instead of MsgBox
      Next
    End If
  End If

  ' Close the connection
  objIMAP4.Disconnect
End If