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Mail messages saved to a folder - need to print them to PDF

S

socalbarrister

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 5, 2011
10
0
I have about 450 emails from a client's Hotmail account that I was able to save to my hard drive as email message files. I now need to "print" (or otherwise convert) all 450 of them into a single PDF. Is there any way to do that other than by opening each individual mail item and printing to PDF?

To be clear, these are email messages that are NOT in any mailbox in my Mail program. If there were a way to bring those messages into Mail somehow, then I figure I could select all of them and print->PDF them. However, I can't figure out either how to get those locally saved mail items into Mail or how to convert all of them at one time into a PDF.

The end result I want is that all 450 messages are in one PDF, to which I can apply successive page numbers.

Many thanks for any help!
 
What happens when you double click on any of them?

I believe that you can create a local folder inside Mail and out all of then there, and then try selecting all of them and the print-> PDF.

Or with all selected, forward them and all should be together?

Have you tried to open them in Preview?
 
McGiord said:
What happens when you double click on any of them?

I believe that you can create a local folder inside Mail and out all of then there, and then try selecting all of them and the print-> PDF.

Or with all selected, forward them and all should be together?

Have you tried to open them in Preview?
Click to expand...


When you double-click on any of them, they open in Mail. I created a local folder but could not figure out how to get Mail to "see" the messages as being in that local folder, even after creating a "Messages" subfolder in the Users->Library->Mail directory and throwing them all in there. Do you know how to do that?

I have not tried opening them in Preview, but opening even 50 messages at once in Preview seems like it would likely hang my system. What would opening them in Preview accomplish?
 
socalbarrister said:
When you double-click on any of them, they open in Mail. I created a local folder but could not figure out how to get Mail to "see" the messages as being in that local folder, even after creating a "Messages" subfolder in the Users->Library->Mail directory and throwing them all in there. Do you know how to do that?
Click to expand...

Try selecting your "Messages" folder and then from the Mailbox menu choose Rebuild.
 
socalbarrister said:
Unfortunately, the mail messages are individually saved (they were dragged out of Mail before and saved to a folder), rather than in a Eudora or Thunderbird mailbox format. Thanks, though.

Does anyone know of a way to bring locally-saved individual emails into Mail?
Click to expand...

It still might work for that.
 
DewGuy1999 said:
It still might work for that.
Click to expand...

I tried running the application, but it wouldn't do anything besides open and close. As soon as you hit "OK" on the launch screen, it shuts down. So, again unfortunately, that won't work. Thanks again, though. Any other ideas out there?
 
socalbarrister said:
I tried running the application, but it wouldn't do anything besides open and close. As soon as you hit "OK" on the launch screen, it shuts down. So, again unfortunately, that won't work. Thanks again, though. Any other ideas out there?
Click to expand...

Do you have Rosetta installed? It needs that as it's a old PowerPC app.

Have you tried using Mail's import option to import them?
 
DewGuy1999 said:
Do you have Rosetta installed? It needs that as it's a old PowerPC app.

Have you tried using Mail's import option to import them?
Click to expand...

No, I don't have Rosetta installed. I might try that, but I'd rather find any other option, as I still don't think the Eudora application will import Apple Mail files to Apple Mail, but only Eudora/Thunderbird. I could be wrong, but that's what it seems like it says it does.

And yes, I've tried using the import option. After selecting the folder that has all these emails in them, Mail says "Error: No valid Apple Mail files were found." When double-clicked, the emails will open in Mail, and I know that they were dragged out of Mail into this local folder, so I don't understand the error message. I am really kicking myself in the pants for not having simply printed them to PDF when they were in Mail to begin with, believe you me...
 
socalbarrister said:
No, I don't have Rosetta installed. I might try that, but I'd rather find any other option, as I still don't think the Eudora application will import Apple Mail files to Apple Mail, but only Eudora/Thunderbird. I could be wrong, but that's what it seems like it says it does.

And yes, I've tried using the import option. After selecting the folder that has all these emails in them, Mail says "Error: No valid Apple Mail files were found." When double-clicked, the emails will open in Mail, and I know that they were dragged out of Mail into this local folder, so I don't understand the error message. I am really kicking myself in the pants for not having simply printed them to PDF when they were in Mail to begin with, believe you me...
Click to expand...

Was the version of Mail they were drug out of the same as the one you're dragging them back into?
 
DewGuy1999 said:
Do the messages have a file extension as part of their name? Would a word processing program be able to open or import them?
Click to expand...

They're all .eml files. TextEdit can open the files, though they are garbled in the translation (Word cannot).
 
socalbarrister said:
They're all .eml files. TextEdit can open the files, though they are garbled in the translation (Word cannot).
Click to expand...

That's weird, according to what I can find on the net, .eml files are from Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird. .emlx are what's used by Apple Mail.

Could you attach one of the .eml messages to a post here and I could try and see what I could do with it?
 
DewGuy1999 said:
That's weird, according to what I can find on the net, .eml files are from Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird. .emlx are what's used by Apple Mail.

Could you attach one of the .eml messages to a post here and I could try and see what I could do with it?
Click to expand...

I can't upload any of the emails for the sake of client confidentiality. However, the .eml extension sounds like it would be due to the fact that the messages were POP3'd into Mail from Hotmail. So far, I've just been opening each mail message individually and printing to PDF. Time consuming, but I figure that I'll be done in 2 hours. If there is any more efficient way to do this, then I'll gladly switch, but at this point, it simply needs to get done.
 
socalbarrister said:
I can't upload any of the emails for the sake of client confidentiality. However, the .eml extension sounds like it would be due to the fact that the messages were POP3'd into Mail from Hotmail. So far, I've just been opening each mail message individually and printing to PDF. Time consuming, but I figure that I'll be done in 2 hours. If there is any more efficient way to do this, then I'll gladly switch, but at this point, it simply needs to get done.
Click to expand...

I was afraid it might be something like that.

Okay, when I was looking for info on the extension, I found that once opened in Mail, you can use the Save option (I believe it was) to save them to one of the mailboxes in Mail. You'd have to do this for each one, but it sounds like it'd work for getting them all into one folder to work with further.

Another option might be to download/install Thunderbird to see if if could import them and then use Apple Mail to import them from Thunderbird.
 
DewGuy1999 said:
I was afraid it might be something like that.

Okay, when I was looking for info on the extension, I found that once opened in Mail, you can use the Save option (I believe it was) to save them to one of the mailboxes in Mail. You'd have to do this for each one, but it sounds like it'd work for getting them all into one folder to work with further.

Another option might be to download/install Thunderbird to see if if could import them and then use Apple Mail to import them from Thunderbird.
Click to expand...

THAT WORKS! Thank you so much! (I still have to open each item and copy it to the local mailbox, but this is MUCH faster than opening and saving to PDF!)
 
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