The plan is for the data to arrive in an Outlook mailbox, in the normal work email system (which is an Exchange server). I have experimented with using the Outlook in-built export functionality to get the data into Access but the entire email body ends up as a single field.

As they say I wouldn't have started here but that part of the system was agreed between the corporate IT department and the users before I got involved.

Your exchnage sever may have POP3 mail box access set up. If it has it's fairly easy to get Mail::POP3Client to grab the mail. I've had to do this recently:

#!c:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe

use Modern::Perl;
use Mail::POP3Client;
use MIME::QuotedPrint;

my $pop_user = 'XXXXXXXXXX';
my $pop_pass = 'XXXXXXXXXX';
my $pop_host = 'exchange3';

#connect to POP3 sever
my $pop = new Mail::POP3Client    ( HOST => $pop_host );
$pop->User($pop_user);
$pop->Pass($pop_pass);
$pop->Connect() 
    or die "Unable to connect to POP3 server: ".$pop->Message()."\n";

#count number of items in POP3 mailbox                                
my $mailcount = $pop->Count();

for (my $i = 1; $i <= $mailcount ; $i++) {
    my $header = $pop->Head($i); #gets the header
    my $uni = $pop->Uidl($i); # gets the unquie id
    my $body = $pop->Body($i);
    $body = decode_qp($body); #decode quoted printable body
    say "$uni";
    say "$header\n";
    say "$body";
}
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Edit 27/07/2011@10:33BST Removed reference to subroutine not include in code &return_error and replaced with die

I tried to run this routine. The error message was: "unable to connect to POP3 server: couldn't connect socket exchange3, 110; Invalid argument." Any advise will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Well, if you want a really backwards way to do it ( which is how I do it! ), i do it like the following:
1. Set up a complex rule in Outlook so that when a message arrives, the following sequence occurs:
a) Outlook can start up a program for you in the rule, i use it to start my perl program, which waits for:
b) Run the following VB script to save the email to a local file, which your perl script is polling

Sub WriteEmailToFile(MyMail As MailItem)
    Dim myMailEntryID As String
    Dim myMailBody As String
    Dim outlookNameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace
    Dim outlookMail As Outlook.MailItem

    myMailEntryID = MyMail.EntryID
    Set outlookNameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set outlookMail = outlookNameSpace.GetItemFromID(myMailEntryID)
    
    Set fileSystemObject = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
     / you can create a dynamic text file name is you want...
    Set textFile = fileSystemObject.CreateTextFile("c:\temp\OutlookEma
+il.txt", True)
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMail.SenderEmailAddress)
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMail.SentOn)
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMail.Subject)
    
    outlookMailBody = outlookMail.Body
    
    'strip non-printing characters
    For x = 127 To 255
       While InStr(outlookMailBody, Chr(x)) > 0
          outlookMailBody = Replace(outlookMailBody, Chr(x), "")
       Wend
    Next x
    
    textFile.WriteLine (outlookMailBody)
    textFile.Close
End Sub
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