mm. i thought i was doing something wrong - since you were perplexed as well, i decided to explore other options.
the version below works now. it needed a directory apparently.

loMsg.SaveAs('c:\mydirectory\Myemail.txt',0)

I have one lingering problem - currently the search goes through ALL email - even unread - so there is about a 7 second delay while it passes over the 4067 emails that have been opened. Is there any way you know i can streamline this to select only UNREAD eamils.

I tried [for each lomsg.unread in ioinbox.items] and i get an error saying lomsg is 'not an object'. The working code is below but as i say there is delay as it sifts through all of the read emails. thanks k

FOR EACH loMSG IN loInBox.Items
IF loMSG.UnRead