The way I currently extract attachments from emails that I have saved in DT is quite time-consuming and I wonder if there is a quicker way of doing it?
The way I currently do it:
I’ve got an email with, say, 11 attachments (all .doc and .pdf). I’ve saved the email in a database.
I’m in the three pane view and have clicked on the email in the upper right pane. Now the content of the email is displayed in the lower right pane.
I click on “Text Alternative”, which displays the content of the email in such a way that the attachments become extractable.
I drag each attachment from the lower right pane up into the upper right pane.
=> Is there a way of extracting ALL attachments at once?
There’s no simple way to do this inside DEVONthink. Though, the request comes up. (Search the forum for this topic.)
If you’re in Mail, you can select all of the attachments by click-dragging a selection box around them, then click-hold the group and drop it on the DEVONthink icon in the dock. DEVONthink will open the group selector panel, where you can select the destination group (among the currently open databases) for the entire set of attachments. (Or drag the messages into an open DEVONthink window.)
(In Snow Leopard, you can do this by dragging the paperclip icon in the message header to DEVONthink or the DEVONthink dock icon. This paperclip-drag feature doesn’t seem to work in Lion Mail, however )
In Lion I click on the ‘Save’ icon in the header toolbar, and choose ‘Save All’ from the list. In the destination window, I choose the Global Inbox from the Finder’s Sidebar.
This is a similar question. If I have an email in DTPO and I use the alternate view I can access the attachment. Like the post above, if I drag it into the upper right pane I can quick look or open the attachment with various apps. If I try to right click on the attachment icon directly in the email, I get no Open or Open with… and spacebar quick look nothing happens. The only way to open the attachment directly from the email is to double click which opens with the default app (not always what I want). Am I missing something or does the limitations of the system require making the attachment its own DT file to use the contextual menu
You’re not missing something. It would be helpful if the contextual “Open”, “Quick Look Attachment” and “Open With…” commands were available in DEVONthink, as they are in Mail when attachments are control-clicked. For now, that’s not the way it works.
What happens in Mail when an attachment is opened is the attachment is extracted from the message and placed in a “downloads” folder inside the mailbox for that account. If this feature existed in DEVONthink, then the attachment would have to go somewhere in the database – say, into the group where the message is located – and then opened from there. You’d get the same result as dragging the attachment out of the message and then opening it – albeit with a bit of convenience for having the contextual menu.
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