My ultimate goal is to export thousands of emails from Outlook 2007 in a format that will allow me to post them on my WordPress powered website.
Update: this problem requires multiple steps to solve, but the major stumbling block I have is that I cannot find a method for removing MicroSoft's crappy HTML from thousands odfemails in bulk.
However, I do not expect that one tool will do the job. A major obstacle right now is to find a way to export thousands of emails in a format that I can manipulate.
Since we all have an idea what the starting data file looks like (Outlook), view this page to see what the end product might look like.
There are many excellent ways to import data into WordPress. I have used Really Simple CSV Importer multiple times and it should do what I need.
There are many tools for exporting email messages, but I have not found one that works for all of my messages. In Outlook, there is an export feature but the file formats are all unacceptable.
One of the best tools is a macro (set of macros, actually) that can export all of the data I need, but it has some issues. The macro can easily export plain text messages or convert HTML messages to plain text, but when exporting HTML messages as HTML, the message has all of Microsoft's garbage HTML in it. The extra HTML elements and properties conflict with my website markup, so I cannot use the macro directly. I have tried modifying it, but I have failed.
Interestingly, WordPress is quite good at cleaning Microsoft's junk HTML. However, I only know how to trigger that function by pasting the text into the "visual editor" of WordPress. Obviously, I cannot do that for thousands of emails.
I have tried some off the shelf software, but they all have limitations that I cannot overcome. As above, a major problem is that the exported email preserves Microsoft's crappy HTML. Sometimes the problem is that the body is well-exported but the To, From, Subject, and Date fields are missing.
A last hurdle, and an important one, is cost. I am unemployed, so I cannot afford the US$249 price tag that some of the products have. Free is best, of course, but if a product were truly fantastic, then I could probably afford $20.
Thank you for your time.