Load and Save an Mbox Message Collection in C# and VB.NET
Mbox (Mboxrd) files are a collection of email messages, which are concatenated and stored as plain text in a single file.
GemBox.Email provides an advanced API for working with the Mbox File format from your C# or VB.NET application. The API represents the collection of email messages with the MailMessageCollection
object.
Besides basic features like loading (via MailMessageCollection.Load
methods), modifying and saving (via MailMessageCollection.Save
methods), you can use different methods for loading, which speeds up the process.
For example, you can use MailMessageCollection.LazyLoad
for lazy message iteration or MailMessageCollection.LoadHeaders
for reading just message headers.
The example below shows how to load, modify, and save email messages to a Mbox file.

using System;
using GemBox.Email;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
// If using the Professional version, put your serial key below.
ComponentInfo.SetLicense("FREE-LIMITED-KEY");
// Load message collection.
MailMessageCollection messages = MailMessageCollection.Load("%InputFileName%");
// Display message information.
foreach (MailMessage message in messages)
{
Console.WriteLine($"From: {message.From}");
Console.WriteLine($"Subject: {message.Subject}");
Console.WriteLine($"Body: {message.BodyText}");
Console.WriteLine();
}
// Create new message.
MailMessage newMessage = new MailMessage("sender@example.com", "receiver@example.com")
{
Subject = "Test email message with a text body",
BodyText = "This is a test message with a text body."
};
// Add message to collection.
messages.Add(newMessage);
// Save message collection.
messages.Save("Modified Collection.mbox");
}
}
Imports System
Imports GemBox.Email
Module Program
Sub Main()
' If using the Professional version, put your serial key below.
ComponentInfo.SetLicense("FREE-LIMITED-KEY")
' Load message collection.
Dim messages As MailMessageCollection = MailMessageCollection.Load("%InputFileName%")
' Display message information.
For Each message As MailMessage In messages
Console.WriteLine($"From: {message.From}")
Console.WriteLine($"Subject: {message.Subject}")
Console.WriteLine($"Body: {message.BodyText}")
Console.WriteLine()
Next
' Create new message.
Dim newMessage As New MailMessage("sender@example.com", "receiver@example.com") With
{
.Subject = "Test email message with a text body",
.BodyText = "This is a test message with a text body."
}
' Add message to the collection
messages.Add(newMessage)
' Save message collection
messages.Save("Modified Collection.mbox")
End Sub
End Module