Can Hazel work with Apple Mail?

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Can Hazel work with Apple Mail? Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:40 am • by mwarner
Sorry for such a simplistic question, but I am uncertain since Apple Mail files are not simple files like others. Does Hazel have the capacity to monitor one of the folders that Apple Mail chucks mail messages into and can Hazel act on those, or do I need to process my mail file with something like Apple script first to get it somewhere else?

Thanks,
Mark
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Re: Can Hazel work with Apple Mail? Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:16 am • by a_freyer
No. Not even for raw *.emlx files.

The reason is that the organization you see in Mail is kept in a database in ~/Library/Mail/ and not within any directory structure. Moving the email (*.emlx) files with Hazel would not change their location in the Mail app, but would instead cause mail to re-download the email to its old location.

Use mail rules for a similar automatic sorting effect. Hazel is not the tool for this.
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Re: Can Hazel work with Apple Mail? Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:31 am • by mwarner
Thanks, that is what I thought. I should have been a bit more specific about my end game. I really need to find a way to get messages out of Apple Mail and into either simple text files or pdf files that I can then get Hazel to possibly act on.

My ultimate goal is to be able to extract information from these files and then have it automatically placed into a spreadsheet.

I'm currently looking into using something like DevonThink Pro office to archive the mail and then run the file conversion from there.
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Re: Can Hazel work with Apple Mail? Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:35 am • by a_freyer
Oh, well in that case then I would use an AppleScript rule to export the message to a text file and then Hazel can do whatever you want with that then.
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Re: Can Hazel work with Apple Mail? Fri Mar 15, 2013 3:59 pm • by carto
I moved mail to Eaglefiler and I can now read messages in a plain text file type.

Of course, it requires another software purchase - but you can demo it.
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