How to copy many emails to a specific folder rather than copy/paste the contents of each message?

Question

I'm trying to create a project folder for some woodworking I will be doing over the next few weeks. Among the first items into this folder is a collection of ~25 emails containing photos and measurements of components on a similar project.

Is there a quick way to copy each of these emails to a specific folder rather than copy/paste'ing the contents of each one?

Answer 1

If the photos and measurements are attachments you could use Automator to download the selected messages to a folder.

http://i.stack.imgur.com/t0jye.png

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Edit: I wrote this AppleScript that will download the message and the attachments for all the selected emails in Mail. Make a new folder in your home directory called Emails and run the following code in AppleScript Editor.

NOTE: Make sure the Emails folder is empty. There may be problems if there are items in it already.

tell application "Mail"
    set the_messages to selection
    repeat with this_message in the_messages
        set message_subject to subject of this_message
        set message_body to content of this_message
        set download_path to "~/Emails/\"" & message_subject & "\""
        set save_path to (POSIX path of ("/Users/" & (short user name of (system info)) & "/Emails/" & message_subject & "/"))

        (* create a directory for the message and attachements *)
        do shell script "mkdir -p " & download_path

        (* save message body into a file *)
        do shell script "echo \"" & message_body & "\" > " & download_path & "/message.txt"

        (* save the attachments *)
        repeat with the_attachment in this_message's mail attachments
            save the_attachment in save_path & ":" & (name of the_attachment)
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

Answer 2

1. Select all the emails you want copied by clicking on each one with the command key pressed.
2. Drag one of the selected emails to the Finder icon in the Dock. A Finder window should open.
3. Navigate to the folder where you want the emails copied by hovering your cursor over them. Leave the mouse button when you reach that folder.
4. The emails should copy over as .eml files.