Since this is being done all the time by email software there must be a standard way of doing it and if anyone could help me I would as always be very grateful.

Well, there is more than one standard, and no doubt there's also email software that's using it's own format. However, "^From " (there's a space after From), is perhaps the most common way of separating messages in email folders. Any leading From in a message is escaped with a > sign.

Having said that, there are a billion modules in the Mail:: hierarchy that will enable you to parse mail folders. It's rumoured that they work. But their shear number has kept me away from them - I just parse folders myself, looking for leading "From " tokens. Has always worked for me so far!

Abigail