Learn how you can use IMAP protocol to extract, parse and read emails from outlook, gmail and other email providers as well as downloading attachments using imaplib module in Python.

Being able to create an application that is able to read your emails and automatically downloading attachments is a handy tool. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the built-in imaplib module to list and read your emails in Python, we gonna need the help of IMAP protocol.

IMAP is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server. Unlike the POP3 protocol which downloads email and delete them from the server (and then read them offline), with IMAP, the message does not remain on the local computer, it stays on the server.

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