How do I get emails with inline images into another program?

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Rekrul
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Joined: May 4th, 2005, 2:56 pm

How do I get emails with inline images into another program?

Post by Rekrul »

I'm asking this question on behalf of someone less technically proficient who asked for my help. Unfortunately I can't figure it out and Googling hasn't been much help.

I have sent this person several very long emails over the years where I have detailed how to do various things with computers. These emails included quite a few inline images. She now wants to archive them all as Word Documents so that she can add notes and save them all in one place.

Unfortunately, it looks like the ability to do this without a metric ton of work doesn't exist. If you just select all in the message, it doesn't copy the images. Save As appears to only save in EML format, not DOC or even HTML.

There appear to be programs to convert EML to DOC, but apparently none of them are free.

The only free solution seems to be to save each image separately, then manually insert them into the text in Word. Which is impractical for a large number of messages with many images in each one.

So am I correct in assuming that all emails with inline attachments are impossible to save/convert/export to any format that Word will read without paying for some extra program?
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tanstaafl
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Re: How do I get emails with inline images into another prog

Post by tanstaafl »

Why not print the messages to a PDF file? Windows 10 has built-in support for a print queue that does that. Or install the free version of Nitro PDF, which adds a similar print queue. I believe Word supports editing PDF files. See https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... 3379C2F63A and https://www.gonitro.com/pdf-reader

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Archiving_your_e-mail for some other ideas such as mbox2xml or using the ImportExportTools add-on to export messages in HTML format with attachments. You can also use the HeaderToolsLite add-on to edit the raw source of a message if you want to add notes to a existing message.
sfhowes
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Re: How do I get emails with inline images into another prog

Post by sfhowes »

Messages can be saved in HTML, eml or text format, and with the help of the ImportExportTools add-on, additional formats and options are available, including saving messages in PDF format, which is probably as versatile as DOC format.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunde ... porttools/
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tanstaafl
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Re: How do I get emails with inline images into another prog

Post by tanstaafl »

I didn't notice ImportExportTools had added support for PDF. That's handy.
Rekrul
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How can email with inline images be saved/converted to Word?

Post by Rekrul »

I'm posting this because someone asked me for help and I can't figure it out on my own.

My friend has quite a few emails with many inline images. These are illustrated guides for how to do various things. She wants to convert them to Word documents so that she can add notes and archive them. Naturally, just copying and pasting doesn't work. :roll: Save As doesn't offer any formats other than EML and of course there's no free software to convert these EML files to anything else.

Copying the text, then manually saving each and every image so that it can be manually inserted into the Word document is not practical.

So, how do you take an email with inline images in Thunderbird and get that email into a Word document with the images intact?

Text and graphics have been around on computers for the last 30+ years, surely there's a way to do something so simple without having to pay $30-100 for a third party program, right?
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DanRaisch
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Re: How can email with inline images be saved/converted to W

Post by DanRaisch »

It's not true that .eml is the only "Save as" file format available. Messages can also be saved as HTML files which can then be viewed using a browser or opened in Word. Use menu path File->Save as->File->click on the "Save as type" line and select "HTML files."

Suggest that your friend try that to see if the inline images are available in the saved file.

I merged your two threads as they were asking the same question.
Rekrul
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Joined: May 4th, 2005, 2:56 pm

Re: How can email with inline images be saved/converted to W

Post by Rekrul »

sfhowes wrote:Messages can be saved in HTML, eml or text format, and with the help of the ImportExportTools add-on, additional formats and options are available, including saving messages in PDF format, which is probably as versatile as DOC format.
Thanks, I'll have her try that.
DanRaisch wrote:It's not true that .eml is the only "Save as" file format available. Messages can also be saved as HTML files which can then be viewed using a browser or opened in Word. Use menu path File->Save as->File->click on the "Save as type" line and select "HTML files."
I did try that in my copy of Thunderbird, but as I use an older version, that didn't work for me. I have the option to view HTML files in the save directory, but even changing the extension to HTML doesn't change the actual file type.

Yes, I'm one of those people who uses an old version. My friend has left auto-update on and updated to each new version that comes out and she's run into problems several times. I don't remember the details now, but I seem to recall that after one update she said her various folders were no longer neatly organized, but had all been jumbled together, then there was something else that she used to be able to do, but which didn't seem to work after an update. Other things she had configured got reset to the defaults, etc. I know there have probably been a ton of security fixes, but I hate updating something that's working well for me.
DanRaisch wrote:Suggest that your friend try that to see if the inline images are available in the saved file.
Thanks, I'll do that.
DanRaisch wrote:I merged your two threads as they were asking the same question.
I didn't mean to double post. I typed the first message, but I wanted to test a couple things and look for something to convert EML to another format, and I could have sworn that I had just closed the tab without posting it. After more searching, I came back thinking I hadn't posted the first message, so I entered a new one. I didn't notice my original message in the forum. In fact when I started reading this thread just now, I was confused by why my message was different than the one I remembered posting. I must be going senile...
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DanRaisch
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Re: How do I get emails with inline images into another prog

Post by DanRaisch »

While there have been security fixes to the email client most updates are bug fixes and enhancements. Most times problems arising after an update are the result of installed extensions that are not compatible with the newer version of the program. That can be resolved if the extension author updates their product. In other cases the problem is actually in the local user profile and not with the update itself. Jumbled folders might have been the result of a corrupted panacea.dat file. That is the Mail folder cache and it can be safely deleted to resolve various issues which appear as phantom folders or jumbled folders.

This thread is now the combination of your two initial posts and most recent reply
I did try that in my copy of Thunderbird, but as I use an older version, that didn't work for me. I have the option to view HTML files in the save directory, but even changing the extension to HTML doesn't change the actual file type.
One can't simply change the file extension but must select the HTML files option from the "Save as type" drop down in the file manager dialogue displayed when saving the message as a file.
Rekrul
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Joined: May 4th, 2005, 2:56 pm

Re: How do I get emails with inline images into another prog

Post by Rekrul »

DanRaisch wrote:One can't simply change the file extension but must select the HTML files option from the "Save as type" drop down in the file manager dialogue displayed when saving the message as a file.
I could have sworn I did that...
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