help with copying emails and strange text

[boofnut]

hi i am trying to copy emails from a ms access document for work. (there are about 6000 of them) when i go into the data base...under the emails column i see ALL this

åëîõôèÀðáõìèåííåò®ãïí

its just lines of that!
if i cant copy all the emails this way, i will have to do 1 at a time with a program and it will take me literally 10 hours

please help
i dont wanna get fired lol

how can i copy the emails. In the program, the emails are all normal (you kno....like myemail@here.com) but in the access document, its like that

help!

 

[boofnut]

oops sorry about that....stupid browser of mine.

so can anyone help

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Possibly you are looking at either UNICODE or you are looking at a non-text portion of the e-mail - like the binary header.

Since e-mails are usually (not always) in MIME format, you might also be looking at MIME headers or included binary data streams (like pictures). I would first be sure of what I was copying. Also, you joke about being fired, but if someone would fire you over this sort of problem, you don't want to work for such a jerk in the first place. Copying arbitrary e-mails is not a trivial problem. As you are beginning to find out.

My first issue, were I to be tasked with this problem, would be to decide what format I am seeing when I look at those mails. Then and only then can I design a proper method for copying them. I know that doesn't help much, but it is how I would attack the problem.