Help me kind I.T ex...
 

[Closed] Help me kind I.T experts of STW

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My boss has asked me to do something and I'm hoping there's an easy way to do it,
I work in a very basic guesthouse, and we receive online bookings from an online travel agent.
He's asked me to go through these emails and write some information into an excel spreadsheet
Guest name, email address, room type, dates, country, etc.
There are over 800 of these emails, and they're all automatically generated by the OTA, so all have the same layout/format
Is there anyway to do this that doesn't involve me going through every email getting the info. manually?
I can get some of the info really easily off the OTA's website, but unfortunately not email address or room type

Help me STW, you're my only hope

p.s its from gmail account if that makes a difference?


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:26 pm
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Start here: [url= https://www.freelancer.co.uk/work/programming-contract-bid/1/ ]freelancer[/url] and ask the same question.

The answer will depend on whether the data is still in the emails or if you can export them. From a programming point of view it quite easy, more so from a set if files than using Google's API unless you are already familiar with it. he answer will depeand on wheter the data is still in the emails or if you can export them.


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:34 pm
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http://www.khughes.co.uk/tech/how-to-export-gmail-messages-to-excel-csv-with-thunderbird/

HTH, Rob - [s]I.T[/s] Google expert 😉


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:35 pm
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I'd hope that the OTA would have an API or some sort of reporting function for just this eventuality!

It's your data that they're holding, I'd just go and ask them for it in a spread sheet!


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:39 pm
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Also found via Google [url= https://www.google.com/settings/takeout ]Takeout[/url]

Assign all the emails from OTA a label and then export the label.

Get quote from someone to parse email and retrieve the data. This is really basic programming


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:40 pm
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ooh that looks good Rob, had tried googling, but like my OP forgot to mention gmail, and all i could find were plug ins i could purchase that could handle thousands of emails a month!
will also checkout Freelancer if i cant get thunderbird to work


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:41 pm
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A quick thing to try....

Export the messages to a file. (a comma separated one (CSV))

Try importing the CSV into EXCEL - If you are very lucky the relevant info will be in the same postion all the time and you'll be able to just select the columns you need.

You might have to do some formatting of the mail body, you can split based on position. If it's a auto email the data should be in the same place and you can do it yourself.


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:41 pm
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Automate it with https://zapier.com/

Have used this for loads of things and it works really well


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:42 pm
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Export the EMails to a CSV file, import into Excel and manipulate the contents from there ?

I do a similar exercise with bulk Emails and that's how I do it. With some clever search/replace stuff then it's quite easy.


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:43 pm
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Cheers guy will look at a lot of these tomorrow (8pm here and about to finish work)
My computer skills stretch to sending and receiving emails, pron, ebay, STW, and that's about it (not necessarily in that order) 🙂


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:55 pm
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If you had a tech friend to call upon then they could use Google scripting to read the gmails and interpret the contents.

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/gmail/

Would be easy to do but you do need a tech 🙂


 
Posted : 30/05/2014 12:59 pm