Importing Selected Emails

For projects, I need to add selected emails to their corresponding project folder. I don’t need to import the entire Mail.app folder in which these emails may saved. In these project folders, I keep drafts, documents, research materials and emails. Ideally, the emails would keep their same dates as in Mail.app. Can this be done?

If individual e-mails are selected when you press the capture key, EagleFiler will ask if you want to import the selected messages or the entire mailbox.

Michael,

Importing selected emails by the F1 key worked just as you described. Importantly, the email date is preserved so the emails are listed by their Mail.app dates and not by the import date. Thank you.

Now, my selected emails were imported into a new folder with the name of the mailbox from which the emails were selected. I then tagged all of the emails with several tags - one tag at a time.

No problem so far. I then tried to move these emails to another “project” folder where I wanted to group or store them with other project documents. I could not move the emails. I read about limits to modifying entire archived mailboxes but was surprised to see the same limits applied to moving selected emails. Do I use tags (or “smart folders” in the future) to group these emails and documents?

Regards,
Gene

ps For anyone following this thread, the import was fast. But I discovered that you cannot import from “smart mailboxes”. You have to select and import from regular mailboxes.

If you often want to apply the same batch of tags, this could be automated via AppleScript.

The limitation is that you cannot add individual messages to a mailbox file. You can, however, select two or more mailboxes and merge them. Ordinarily this should do what you want if you had imported the messages in logical groupings.

You can also freely re-arrange messages using tags. A tag source can hold document files as well as messages from different mailboxes, and you can add or remove them from the tag source at any time.

The reason for this is that EagleFiler reads the message files directly from the disk, and smart mailboxes don’t exist as folders on disk; they’re essentially live search results.

Importing and Using Selected Emails
Michael,

Thank you again. In EagleFiler currently, I see that tags are very important - especially for grouping different kinds of documents and documents that may be in different folders. They truly act as “playlists” in iTunes.

Now I am questioning whether it’s useful to separate “library” documents into “client” or “project” folders - or just leave them together in the library - and group them with tags. For example, I now have three sources with the same name - a “project” folder, a “mail” folder and a tag. Of these, the tag is the most important because it is the only source that combines all three sources.

Interesting. At least by deleting the “project” folder (but not the files), I remove some clutter. Yet the “project” folders do help filter searches and make them faster. But tags provide the same search filter don’t they? So maybe “project” folders don’t help so much after all.

Regards,
Gene

The “mail folders” are called mailboxes, by the way.

Yes.

Much of this comes down to what feels right to you, but in general I don’t think it makes sense to have tags and folders with the same names. I would use folders if you want some other axis of organization that’s separate from the tags. For example, you might use folders to organize files by the month that you added them, by the way that you want to browse them in the Finder, or by which archival CD you’ve burned them to. Crucially, a file can only be in one folder, but it can be in more than one tag, so the folder system should be such that there is exactly one place for each file to be.

Using Tags with Importing Selected Emails and Folders
Michael,

Thank you again for your immediate reply. I used “mail folders” to distinguish selected emails from entire archived mailboxes. I see I was making it too hard.

I am an attorney and basically am trying to recreate a paper filing system. Most of my files are already electronic in one format or another. However, my finder-based filing system is slowly breaking down. File names are consistent. But sometimes I file by date, larger clients and projects I file by named folders and smartfolders, and sometimes I have to file using Mail.app, etc.

Devonthink’s AI does not interest me. I will do the filing. Journler is interesting. It’s importing is intuitive and allows me to file as I import. But it imports more slowly than EF and does not track the finder and MacOS as closely as EF. And from reviews, EF appears more capable of scaling for large numbers of documents.

EF and Journler handle the same files - except that EF handles email better, and I understand that EF also handles Excel files.

Considering EF, I was prepared to use “smartfolders” but not tags for grouping files. EF appears ready to use “tag clouds” (if I understand that term) and use these tags for more flexible filing systems than rigid paper systems.

It’s forcing me to reconsider how I work. Thank you.

Regards,
Gene

ps I don’t know if you have time to follow any Mac Lawyer blogs but EF is mentioned from time to time in conversations about paperless offices, document management, etc. One blog with links is http://gdgrifflaw.typepad.com/home_office_lawyer/macs_in_the_law_office/index.html

I’ll take a look, and thanks for explaining a bit about how you work with EagleFiler.

Importing selected emails - Follow-up

Hi Michael, I tried on a MBP to use the capture key and get one email in EF. The noise was good but the pop up showed … (please look at the attachment).
What did I make wrong?
Thanks for your help!

That screenshot looks normal. Which button did you click? After that, did you click the Mailboxes button or the Messages button?

Are you sure that only one e-mail was imported? Only one mailbox will show up in the source list, but when you click on it you should see multiple messages in the records list.

You are right! It does work. I was afraid to click on the ‘continue’ button. Nonetheless, what can I do to make it more agreeable as accents (some emails are in French) appear ugly (see picture) and lots of space is taken by technical sentences about the email format. Thanks for your feed-back. Fred

Try unchecking View > Message > Raw Source.

That does work easily. Lots of thanks for your prompt support. Fred

Importing emails - next
Michael, Is it normal that EF doesn’t want to import from the inbox Mailbox? Any way to get that function and avoid many mailboxes (I use nearly only the In box and tag emails)?

I “store” files/emails/etc during the day and clean up EF at the end (when I take time to do so), and the 2 columns presentation of EF is not the best suited for that task (like the normal Mail window): Would a three columns looking be in your To Do list (like what letterbox has done for Mail)?

Thanks for your answer. Fred

Are you referring to the message that says:

This appears to be a special “merged” mailbox that displays messages from more than one account. Please untwist the mailbox’s triangle, select the mailbox for the desired account, and then try the capture again.

(If you only have one account, you can create a second, dummy account and then Mail will show the triangle so that you can get at the submailboxes. Or you can drag the message(s) to a different mailbox and capture them from there.)

? If so, that’s normal, it’s due to the way Mail works, and there’s a workaround (create a second account).

I’m not sure what you mean by “avoid many mailboxes.”

I’m considering adding a wide-screen view.

Thanks! All the best.

EagleFiler 1.4.5 improves the capture process so that you should now be able to import any message from Apple Mail by pressing the capture key.