Question

I am attempting to get the body of an email message using message.get_payload().

However, this only retrieves the text content of the email, even though the original message is in HTML (i.e. properly displayed in my mail client). How can I retrieve the full HTML content of the message?

Answer 1

From the documentation

get_payload([i[, decode]]) 
    Return the current payload, which will be a list of Message objects when 
    is_multipart() is True, or a string when is_multipart() is False.

    With optional argument i, get_payload() will return the i-th element of 
    the payload, counting from zero, if is_multipart() is True.

Usually HTML email is sent as MIME message. There is often a text only copy and a HTML copy. Have you check how many parts you messages has and if you’ve tried to retrieve other parts?