Duplicate disclaimer text in PR_HTML when reading MSG file

Aspose.Email Product Family
1

Hello Aspose Support Team,

I am using Aspose.Email to read .msg files. I noticed that in some emails, the disclaimer text (inserted by our mail server) appears twice in the HtmlBody.

When I checked the raw MAPI property PR_HTML (via MFCMAPI), I found that the duplicate text is actually present inside MSO conditional comments (<!--[if mso]> ... <![endif]-->) as well as in the normal HTML body.

For example:

<!--[if mso]>
<p style="color:red;">Security Disclaimer</p>
<![endif]-->

<p style="color:red;">Security Disclaimer</p>

So, when I use Aspose to read the email, I also see the duplicated disclaimer.

Here is the code I used:

string body = mailMessage
    .GetHtmlBodyText(false)
    .Replace("<", "&lt;")
    .Replace(">", "&gt;")
    .Replace("\n", "<br />")
    .Replace("\r", "");

My questions are:

  1. Does Aspose.Email provide any built-in functionality to normalize or clean up the HtmlBody, for example by removing MSO conditional comments?
  2. If not, what is the recommended approach to handle this scenario? Should I post-process the HTML myself (e.g., with regex or an HTML parser), or does Aspose have a utility for this?
  3. Is this considered expected behavior (Aspose returning raw PR_HTML), or should I report it as a bug/feature request?

Thank you for your guidance.

Best regards,
Nghia

2

@nguyen.xuan.nghia

Hello Nghia,

  1. Aspose.Email does not provide built-in functionality specifically for normalizing or cleaning up the HTML body, such as removing MSO conditional comments.

  2. The recommended approach to handle this scenario is to post-process the HTML yourself. You can use a regular expression or an HTML parser to remove the MSO conditional comments. Here’s a simple example using regex in C#:

    string cleanedBody = Regex.Replace(body, @"<!--\[if mso\].*?<!\[endif\]-->", string.Empty, RegexOptions.Singleline);

    This regex will effectively match and remove the MSO conditional comments from the HTML body.

  3. This behavior is expected since Aspose.Email returns the raw PR_HTML as it is. If you believe this could be improved, consider submitting a feature request to enhance the handling of such cases.

Best regards!

3

Hi Support Team,

Thank you very much for your feedback.
I understand your suggested solution, but I still have a problem:

I am using the following code to get the body:

body = mailMessage.GetHtmlBodyText(false)
    .Replace("<", "&lt;")
    .Replace(">", "&gt;")
    .Replace("\n", "<br />")
    .Replace("\r", "");

When I call mailMessage.GetHtmlBodyText(false), the returned body already contains the disclaimer text duplicated.

My question is:
Is there a way to remove the parts <!--[if mso] ... <![endif]--> before mailMessage.GetHtmlBodyText(false) parses the content?

The reason I am asking is that I really want to continue using mailMessage.GetHtmlBodyText(false) because it already fits our requirements. If I change the logic to extract the body differently, there is a risk that the output will not match the current behavior of GetHtmlBodyText(false).

Do you have any solution or recommended approach for this?

I hope this makes sense, and I look forward to your guidance.

Best regards,
Nghia

4

Hello @nguyen.xuan.nghia,

Thank you for clarifying your scenario.

Currently, Aspose.Email doesn’t provide a built‑in way to remove <!--[if mso]> ... <![endif]--> conditional comments before mailMessage.GetHtmlBodyText(false) processes the content. This method works directly on the raw PR_HTML property, so MSO conditional comments are included in the result.

The recommended approach is to clean the HTML body before calling GetHtmlBodyText(false). For example:

// Remove MSO conditional comments from the HTML body
mailMessage.HtmlBody = Regex.Replace(
    mailMessage.HtmlBody,
    @"<!--\[if mso\].*?<!\[endif\]-->",
    string.Empty,
    RegexOptions.Singleline);

// Now call GetHtmlBodyText(false) as usual
string body = mailMessage.GetHtmlBodyText(false)
    .Replace("<", "&lt;")
    .Replace(">", "&gt;")
    .Replace("\n", "<br />")
    .Replace("\r", "");

This way, you preserve the behavior of GetHtmlBodyText(false) while removing duplicate disclaimers caused by MSO conditional blocks.

Please note this behavior is expected. If you consider this a common scenario, you may also submit a request so our team can evaluate adding an option to filter out MSO conditional comments directly within the lib.

5

Hi Support Team,

Thank you very much for your response. It really helped me solve my problem.

Best regards,
Nghia

6

You are welcome!