Saving copies of email as PDF or Pages/Word documents

You may be able to somewhat automatically use an email app
such as Thunderbird to get a duplicate of your GMail to your
computer; or use an iMap or POP setup (as discussed else-
where, online, when addressing actual archiving of Gmail to
a computer or at least a non-google server archive.)

{Since I don't use an email app nor do I use the ISP's provided
email account system, but have used a few free web mail sites
before Gmail from Google; I now solely use Gmail, and could
use an easier method, too, of archiving direct to the computer.
But I do not want to set up an email client software to do this.}

The ease, if it existed, of being able to have Gmail create a
downloadable .zip archive of email in dated batches, could
save a bit of time. Of course, having to open and read through
them to find a single important email's content takes away time.

There are a few ideas online about how to archive and access
Gmail, to a computer's hard disk drive or similar archive; but
one that looked somewhat promising has not made the transition
to Mac OS X in a handy GUI form: "Gmail Backup."

You could use the Gmail "archive" system in your Gmail account
and that would keep those mail items apart from your recent stuff.
Or, send those emails to a second gmail account. That would only
give you the dates they were forwarded and not a "by date" filing
system; so making copies that way makes a new kind of job of it.

• "How do I backup my GMail?"
http://ask-leo.com/howdo_i_backup_mygmail.html

Perhaps someone has a better idea in some shareware tool or
an easier path to set up a POP or other account and use a second
app such as Thunderbird to handle or make actual offline archives.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Once you get the emails you want archived into the Mac, as a group,
there may be a way to save a process as a Script or perhaps make
some thing work in Automator.

Was there any hint of suggestion in regard to this kind of need in
the Google user forums? There may be some kind of tool in the
works at Google to help do this kind of action; if not, someone
could suggest the idea (including the reasoning, & path) to them.

The native TextEdit app could make a fair text document that
could be utilized if the Print dialog's own PDF was somehow
not adequate. Some versions of Windows see a TextEdit as Text.

Sample scripts are included in the Mac OS X, so understanding
rules of creating, recording, editing in script may be worthwhile.

In any event...
Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

You could select all the messages and Save As... RTF. All the messages would be concatenated into one long RTF file, but the formating and basic headers would be preserved.

Use a Smart Mailbox to collect the group of emails. Select All, and then Save As a RTF file. That RTF can be opened with Pages, and exported as a PDF of multiple pages that preserve headers and text. Attachments, if any, may have to be saved separately, but in Leopard they may be saved, but can't test right at the moment.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper