Mass printing apple mail.

[Dal123]

I need to print a few hundred emails from apple mail. I don't want to select all then print as there will be ferocious waste. I found this great link http://www.macworld.com/article/51515/2006/06/mailcombo.html but in automator on lion there is no combine mail messages.

I then want to set to draft quality print, black and white, odd pages first then do even pages to save waste, time and money. Anyone got any thoughts , I do not have the time nor knowledge to write a script.

 

[Weaselboy]

How about select all the messages then print to PDF files. Then you can use Automater to combine the PDFs into one file/PDF. Then you will have all your messages in one PDF file to print and manipulate how you want.

 

[Dal123]

Thanks, how do I change the settings for the printing though. My default setting is A3 and tray 1. I need to print via tray 2 on a4, in black and white, draft quality, odd pages only. I have tried setting default settings on printer, many, many times and have never managed to get it to work.

 

[Weaselboy]

Go to the print dialog and click "Show Details" then you will get my second screen cap. If you click the drop down I marked there are several print settings there including tray selection.

 

[Dal123]

Thanks weasel, I tried that first time but for some reason I did not get the screen you got up. At this moment in time I have reverted to printed from preview.
Pretty disappointing using these mundane methods; would've thought Lion would have had a decent feature for this .

 

[Dal123]

Convert emails to pdf's.

How can one format emails in apple mail to pdf's?

 

[GGJstudios]

How can one format emails in apple mail to pdf's?

Open the email. Then File > Print > PDF > Save as PDF.

 

[Dal123]

Struggling

Really struggling with this now . I have saved the emails in the inbox as .pdf's.
The problem is:

If I use preview; the documents open well, and I can quickly remove certain unnecessary pages. However I cannot save the 300 or so emails as I've edited them (without certain pages) so when I need to print these out for my accountant I have to go through all this again (which is not possible; don't have time).

If I use acrobat professional; I can remove pages brilliantly and save the document no problem. Problem is the dates are mixed up; acrobat does not import as friendly as preview with the dates the emails were received; displayed in top of document in most emails (not all). It is pain staking and near on impossible to arrange the dates as there are so many pages and they are all over the place it gets disorientating and pretty impossible to drag one page over three hundred pages then all over again .

 

[Joos24]

How about select all the messages then print to PDF files. Then you can use Automater to combine the PDFs into one file/PDF. Then you will have all your messages in one PDF file to print and manipulate how you want.

While I can't really help with the OP's print dialog box issues I can say that one extra step can be taken out of your post. Since Leopard 10.5, Preview could combine PDF's on it's own without any Automator script.

You just open the first PDF and "Select All" of the rest of them and drag them to the sidebar of the first PDF and they will all combine.

 

[Dal123]

Thanks for that great tip Joos , all I'm worried about is I don't think I can save the whole lot of files then; pages are not removed from the actual original documents.
When I need to send to accountant I'll have to do this all over again. I think.

 

[Weaselboy]

While I can't really help with the OP's print dialog box issues I can say that one extra step can be taken out of your post. Since Leopard 10.5, Preview could combine PDF's on it's own without any Automator script.

You just open the first PDF and "Select All" of the rest of them and drag them to the sidebar of the first PDF and they will all combine.

I have used that but it does not seem to follow sort by date. I have had trouble with the PDFs just being in random order. I use the Automater action to sort by date first then combine. I have it setup as a service so I can select then right click a group of PDFs and select combine. Much faster than using Preview.

 

[Dal123]

I thought about trying that but I didn't think sorting by date in automator would work. As the files are being newly created by exporting the mailbox and they are all jumbled in different folders, so may grab from another then move down to next directory etc.
I'll have to give it another go tomorrow. At the moment I had to resort to just print out about 500 pages on one sided paper with gaps everywhere. Such a waste .

 

[Dal123]

Does anyone have an idea on how to print lots of emails in apple mail on Lion on consecutive pages. Instead of printing new pages on a new email starting again I want the new email to print on the usually wasted page.

 

[simcjackson]

Printing Bulk Emails using Mac Mail

Hi,

To print a batch of emails, first jump into Preview, and set (under preferences) General "Open all files in one window"

Then jump back to Mail, and Print to PDF - select Open PDF in Preview.

All the mail messages should appear in Preview (in one window)

Then Select them all using Shift, and Print to PDF

I hope this helps