Get attachments from .eml files that are not in ~/Library/Mail

Question

I copied a large number of .eml files from Mail.app to a separate folder. Each message has two attachments: a .kmz in base64 and a .gpx in plain text.

I want to get these attachments from the .eml files. Since the .eml identifies the original file name, it would be nice to keep that. But it's also possible that more than one might have the same filename.

Two possible solutions :

• Using Python
• Using Applescript

But since I don't know much about either language, I don't know what mods they would need to be able to work on my files nor the syntax I'd need to run them.

There is also a free tool offered online, but since dozens of domain names are pushing it with identical web pages, I suspect it's malware.

I can go through the messages one by one in Mail.app and drag out the attachments, but it would be nice to not have to do that 408 times.

Answer 1

Well, this is embarrassing. Instead of dragging all the messages out to a Finder folder, what I should have done (and have now done) is select all those messages and then File→Save Attachments…

I think there were some filename collisions, though. Because I expect 408 messages to provide 408 .kmz, 408 .gpx, & 408 .eml for a total of 1224 files. But I only got 818 files.  I ran a script to move them into dated directories, so I'm not sure what's missing.  The ones I looked at contained all three file types.