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blanka

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 30, 2012
1,551
4
I need an mbox file viewer for the Mac. I just want to be able to open a mbox file with an App and search it. I have no intention to import all my old e-mails into a modern mail program, so don't come with import or convert solutions.
The only convert option that would be viable, is a converter that converts an mbox file to EML files, with proper/custom folder/name structure.
For example convert an mbox file to the following structure
Code:
account@ domain.tld
   /inbox
      /heather@domain.tld/
          20110203.001 How are you today.eml
          20110125.001 Found a nice website.eml
      /dough@domain.tld/
          20110402.001 Check these pictures.eml
and so on, and so on.

Mail.app just comes up with garbage like
Inbox/
0001.eml
0002.eml
0003.eml
etc.
 
Not quite sure what you want, but it seems either a conversion utility and/or search utility.

The mboxes created by Mail are searchable by Spotlight, and you can use Quick Look to view them.

Something like HoudahSpot can make that searching more focused and usuable. EasyFind will do it for free, and IIRC can search files that have not been indexed by Spotlight. In your example, you'd search by author and then sort by date or whatever to approximate threading.

I once used archiving software to search through tons of old email. Now I just use tagging and Leap, which works especially well with mboxes using the "deep" feature. Then I can tag ones I find and do further work on them. I suppose I could then find some kind of utility to place them in hierarchies like what you describe, but that imposes yet another database structure as a means of organizing, and if I wanted that I'd import what I found back into Mail or MailSteward. It does mean I have to be more creative in that all the stuff that a mail client puts in structure like "sender" "date" "reply-to" etc etc are treated more as freeform text, but I actually prefer that in this case.

Good luck,
Rob
 
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