How do I avoid truncation of message subjects at 255 chars with the EWS managed API? - email

Question

I have an email messge on an Exchange server (2010 SP1) with a Subject header that is 272 characters long. Both Outlook and OWA show it truncated to the first 252 characters followed by "...". EWSEditor shows it the same way. I know, however, that the full Subject is stored somewhere, because when I look at the headers in Message Options dialog Outlook or in the Message Details in OWA, all 272 characters are there.
My code is only gettting the truncated Subject, and I need a way to get the full string.
My code is using SyncFolderItems to get a ChangeCollection of ItemChange objects. I have two code branches for this. One retrieves FirstClassProperties, and one retrieves IdOnly. I have a function called getItemStringProp(), and depending on the branch, I either call it directly with the Item that I get from the ItemChange, or with the Item that I get by binding to the ItemChange.Item.Id. In both cases, my getItemStringProp() uses Item.TryGetProperty() and returns a max of 255 characters for the Subject. If the actual subject is longer, then I get 252 chars followed by "...".
Here's my code from the branch doing SyncFolderItems with FirstClassProperties:
useIdOnly = false;
icc = exchange.SyncFolderItems(folderId, PropertySet.FirstClassProperties, null, syncFolderItemsBatchSize, SyncFolderItemsScope.NormalItems, result.getSyncState());
and from the other branch:
useIdOnly = true;
icc = exchange.SyncFolderItems(folderId, PropertySet.IdOnly, null, syncFolderItemsBatchSize, SyncFolderItemsScope.NormalItems, result.getSyncState());
Following this, I drill down to get the Subject:
foreach (ItemChange ic in icc)
{
if (!useIdOnly)
{
icSubject = getItemStringProp(ic.Item, EmailMessageSchema.Subject,"Subject", folderName,"");
}
else
{
PropertySet itemProps = new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly);
itemProps.Add(EmailMessageSchema.Subject);
itemProps.Add(EmailMessageSchema.DateTimeSent);
itemProps.Add(EmailMessageSchema.ItemClass);
Item item = Item.Bind(exchange, ic.Item.Id, itemProps);
icSubject = getItemStringProp(item, EmailMessageSchema.Subject, "Subject", folderName, "");
}
}
And here's the function that gets the Subject:
private String getItemStringProp(Item item, PropertyDefinition propDef, String propName, String fName, String defaultValue)
{
// some debug logging code and error checks omitted
object prop = null;
String value = "";
try
{
if (item.TryGetProperty(propDef, out prop) && prop != null)
{
value = prop.ToString();
}
if (prop == null || value == null)
{
value = defaultValue;
}
}
return value;
}
By the way, I'm aware that neither Outlook (at least the 2007 version) nor OWA allows creation of a message with a Subject longer than 255 characters. The message in question came into Exchange via SMTP, and a Subject far longer than 255 characters is legal according to the RFCs.

Answer 1

Don't rely on Item.Bind(), sync, search, or any other operation in EWS to load up all of the properties you're looking for. Have you tried getting the item, then doing a .load(PropertySet) or ExchangeService.loadPropertiesForItems()? Some properties won't come through in various retrieval actions even if you specifically request them. Some may come through, but get truncated. What makes it more fun is that I don't think there's any documentation telling you exactly which operations will return which properties, so you get to guess and check. You have to load the property set after you retrieve the Item(s), so it's usually best to get the Item with the ID only, then load the property set.