Export Insurance broker emails to Excel

By the Mail → Excel team · Updated 2026-10-20

Four steps, one command, and a completeness check at the end — for policy documents and renewals from email.

Step 1 — connect read-only

Use an app password, never the main password. The script opens the folder in read-only mode, so nothing is marked as read or deleted.

python mail_to_excel.py --host imap.example.com --user you@example.com --days 31 --fields policy,client,renewal,premium,status --out insurance-broker.xlsx

Step 2 — filter to one period

A month or a quarter, not «everything». Renewals fail silently. A table of policy numbers and dates turns renewals into a calendar instead of a memory test.

Step 3 — keep only the columns that matter

Column	Why it matters
`policy`	Policy number — the key for renewals.
`client`	The join key for every other report you will build later.
`renewal`	Renewal date; the column that becomes your calendar.
`premium`	Premium amount with currency and period columns.
`status`	Fixed vocabulary: open / in progress / done / blocked.

Step 4 — verify completeness

Run the same search in your mail client and note the message count.
Compare it with the row count in the spreadsheet.
If the numbers differ, the filter or the folder is wrong — fix it before using the file.

Example output

policy	client	renewal	premium	status
POL-99321	Orion Ltd	2026-12-01	2,400	quoted

Pitfalls

Scanned policy PDFs are not searchable — Keep the file reference and mark «scan» so OCR can be added later.
Premium values mix currencies and periods — Separate currency and period columns; never sum across them.

Provider notes

Corporate Exchange typically requires OAuth; personal Outlook works with an app password.

Ready-made: the $3 script implements these steps and writes the Excel file with the columns above. Get the script.

FAQ

Can this remind me about renewals?

Export weekly and sort by renewal date; the spreadsheet becomes the reminder list.

Does it read policy numbers from PDFs?

Not yet — it indexes the attachments; extraction from PDF text is a separate step.

How many messages can it handle?

Thousands per run with a date filter; very large mailboxes are better exported month by month.

Will it change anything in the mailbox?

No. Read-only access is the default and should stay enabled.

Related guides

Insurance broker: columns and pitfallsThe compact overview for this role.
Universal IMAP guideApp passwords, decoding and Excel output.