When you receive PGN format chess games in your mailbox you might want to collect those games in a separate pgn file.
Instead of copying the individual games to a text file you can now use Mail2PGN to scan your inbox for PGN games and write them to file.
Mail2PGN can read plain text inbox files like for example Mozilla Thunderbird uses and Outlook folders. If you need another mail format write me at feedback (at) davitools.com and I will try to add the requested format.
Documentation
You need the .NET Framework 2.0 or higher to run Mail2PGN.
usage:
mail2pgn [-s source | -f outlookfolder[\outlookfolder]] -d destination
source Path to mail text file
outlookfolder Outlook folder path (ommit for Inbox)
destination Path to destination PGN file
If you are using Mozilla Thunderbird as you email client you need to specify the location of the mbox text file. This file is easily found by look at the properties of your email account.
Select the account in Thunderbird and click “View settings for this account”. On the “Server Settings” tab page look for the “Local directory” textbox. Copy the folder containing your inbox file and add “\inbox”.
If you are using Outlook, Mail2PGN will know how to find your default Inbox. If the games are in a subfolder you need to specify the folder using the “-f” switch. You can specify more subfolders by separating the folder names with a backslash.
Mail2PGN is tested with Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007.
Please note that when you use Mail2PGN with Micosoft Outlook you might get a warning message from Outlook that a program is trying to access your addresses. This warning is part of the Outlook Object Model Guard and is fired because Mail2PGN “reads” your message to find the PGN. You have to allow this for Mail2PGN to function properly.
Examples
The following command line will write games found in a mbox mail file called “inbox” and copy them to “d:\chess games\mail.pgn”:
mail2pgn -t TEXT -s inbox -d “d:\chess games\mail.pgn”
The following command line will write games found in the default Outlook Inbox and copy them to “d:\chess games\mail.pgn”:
mail2pgn -t OUTLOOK -d “d:\chess games\mail.pgn”
The following command line will write games found in the subfolder “chessgames\won” of the Outlook Inbox and copy them to “d:\chess games\mail.pgn”:
mail2pgn -t OUTLOOK -f chessgames\won -d “d:\chess games\mail.pgn”