Moving notes from Mail into DTP

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi

I am looking for a simple way of transferring my notes in Mail to DTP, ideally preserving creation date and converting to RTF format.

When I drag notes from Mail to DTP they are in eml format, with a new creation date and I can’t find a way of converting to RTF.

Any help to get this sorted would be appreciated.

Thanks

Nick

2

Click on the little “Text” icon in the navigation bar above the text pane.

This will change the display from Quick Look to rich text, so that text may be selected and copied to the clipboard, etc.

3

Thanks. I’m aware that I could manually copy text and paste into new RTF files, but was hoping that I wouldn’t have to do this for 300+ notes! And then there’s the issue of maintaining the creation dates of the notes.

I wonder, if there was no other option, whether DTPO with its mail integration would help out here. This would mean an upgrade that I’d rather avoid, seeing as this would be a one time operation (I am switching to using DTP and DTTG for managing notes). But if this would mean avoiding manually cutting and pasting all these notes I would consider it.

4

What I described above is the behavior of Mail messages captured into DT Pro Office. The “Text” button toggles the display (temporarily) to rich text so that text is selectable/copyable and attachments may be opened. The default display (as it also is in DT Pro) of Mail messages is Apple’s Quick Look.

5

Right click one or more of the notes/eml documents in DTP. In the contextual menu choose Convert > to Rich Text. Or use Data > Convert > to Rich Text form the menubar. You can select any number of documents to convert in one action.

To preserve creation date, don’t drag the notes to DTP. Use the Message > Add to DEVONthink item from the Mail menu bar. (Be sure the Apple Mail Plugin is installed.) That plugin preserves creation date in eml documents. HOWEVER (ack!) when you convert to RTF that date is not preserved.

6

Thanks. Unfortunately there is no convert option showing in the contextual menu for the eml files, and in the Data Menu all convert options are greyed out (using DTP 2.05)

The Apple Mail Plugin comes with DTPO and I have DTP, so I’m still stuck

7

I’m not a DTPer, but AFAIK it should be available always, and is over here. Let’s see if other DTP users have that issue.

8

Just to say, I found a great ‘workaround’ using PhoneView App. Just drag and drop all notes from iPhone or iPad listed in PhoneView into a new group in DTP and hey presto, all are converted to txt format (ready for syncing with DTTG for editing on the iPad/iPhone), with modification and creation dates preserved.

Perfect!