One of the key features of EagleFiler for me is to be a safe (because local and optionally encrypted) storage for email. I have a lot of folders in Mail.app and a high 6 digit number of emails. So there is an obvious necessity for finding a system to reliably manage emails offline. Old projects, etc. simply do no longer need to be on my server.
To test (literally - I am still in trial mode) EagleFiler’s import-capabilities, (1) I opened one of the many folders, (2) I clicked on the first conversation, and (2) used the capture key to import all emails in this conversation (6 altogether).
I checked my EagleFiler-library and expected 6 messages (3 questions from a client and 3 answers from me.), but there were only 3 messages there: EagleFiler only imported the ones I received, not the ones I have sent.
Now I am pretty sure that I have done something wrong as I am an EagleFiler newbie, but I could not find a step-by-step tutorial on how to import e-mail-conversations (received and sent emails) at the same time and display them in conversation view (or at least sorted by date, so that they are together) in EagleFiler? Only archiving one part of the conversation is archiving half done.
So my question is: How can I import conversations - and not single e-mails - from Mail.app into EagleFiler?
EagleFiler always imports the messages that are selected in the message list in Apple Mail. If you only have one mailbox selected, Mail’s message list will only show the received or sent messages (not both). To get both halves of the conversation, you would need to select both mailboxes (i.e. Inbox and Sent). You can do this with a single import if you Command-click to select multiple mailboxes, or do them separately.
Depending on how you are archiving, you might prefer to first move the messages (from both halves of the conversation) into a single project-specific mailbox in Mail. Then you could just import this whole mailbox into EagleFiler (by selecting all its messages).
When displaying e-mails in EagleFiler, you can tell it to sort by Title, and it will group messages from the same thread together and sort them chronologically.
I have tried that, but it does not work as I would like it to work. If I select the project-folder as well as the sent-folder, I have the received mails from the project-folder (where the most recent e-mail is already 2 years old) and all e-mails I have ever sent. So there is no matching in any way.
At first I thought you are talking about a smart folder. I created one, selected to show all e-mails in the specific folder, and clicked on “include mails in sent-folder”. In the new smart folder, I again saw received and sent mails. In EagleFiler only the received ones were saved. Then I tried a local folder into which I copied the mails by selecting the main thread in the message-list and copying it via the contextual menu. I could see all e-mails, sent and received, but EagleFiler only imported the ones I have received.
There is one thing though: In Apple Mail’s conversation-view, there are small numbers in the message-list. These numbers directly correspond to the numbers of e-mails imported into EagleFiler.
Okay, I thought, let me go the “worst” way: I exported the folder as a mailbox and saved the mbox-file. When I tried to import it into EagleFiler, I got an error-message telling me that this was an unknown mailbox-format.
When I said that EagleFiler imports the messages that are selected, I meant one message per line of the selection. Sometimes when you select a single message, Mail makes it look like more than one is selected, because it’s showing the whole conversation in the other pane. To actually select all the messages for EagleFiler, you need to click the triangle to expand the conversation, then select the “sub-messages.” This may be easier to see if you are using the “classic layout” in Mail. If you still can’t get this to work, please post a screenshot showing what the window looks like before you press the capture key.
Okay, this is really not that easy to understand if you use the non-classic, but the new layout.
Sometimes when you select a single message, Mail makes it look like more than one is selected, because it’s showing the whole conversation in the other pane.
This is exactly what I meant.
To actually select all the messages for EagleFiler, you need to click the triangle to expand the conversation, then select the “sub-messages.” This may be easier to see if you are using the “classic layout” in Mail.
Okay, I did that and it does exactly what you say. However, there is one exception: In classic view, Mail only shows conversations when you select the “main” (not the “sub”) message. In this view you can see received and sent mails. The moment you select the sub-messages, there are - again - only the received mails.
If you still can’t get this to work, please post a screenshot showing what the window looks like before you press the capture key.
Okay, here are two screenshots. “EagleFiler Mail 1” shows the “parent-message” selected with a conversation-view. You can clearly see sent and received messages.
And here, “EagleFiler Mail 2” you can see the selection I had you told me to do. But these are only the received messages. So my problem is still unsolved.
In the mailbox pane (at the left of the window) select both the mailbox containing the received messages and the mailbox containing the sent messages. Then the message list will show both types of messages at once.
Hi (and sorry that it takes so long to figure this out)!
The problem when I follow your advice is that sent messages are in the folder “sent”. All messages I have ever sent are in the folder “sent”.
So the moment I select the “sent”-folder in addition to the specific folder where the received messages are in, Apple Mail shows me (1) all emails in the specific folder and (2) all emails I have ever sent (also ones that are completely unrelated to the specific folder I want to back up). But since my idea is to back up e-mails project-specific, this does not work out at all.
I thought you were using Mail’s “Organize by Conversation” feature. In that case, all the e-mails (sent and received) in the same thread will be contiguous in the list.
I have “Organize by Conversation” unchecked in Mail, and I archive entire mailboxes at a time.
I created a smart folder with received as well as sent mails showing. I selected them all and imported them into EagleFiler. That solved all problems above…
