How to export multiple emails to PDF with the date of receipt in the name ?

> It would be so nice if Apple provide an easy way to save and organise our emails

I'm curious as to why exporting to PDF is your preferred solution anyway. What's wrong with leaving them in Mail.app? - it's searchable and sortable...?

> There is no way to ask Apple to improve it?

https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html would be the place to start.

By introducing a select verb before the keystroke command, keystroke now has selected text that it will replace in the Save as: field, and the PDF gets exported with the constructed filename with the date prepended.

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions

tell application "Mail"
	activate
	delay 0.2
	set i to item 1 of (get selection)
	set dr to date received of i
	tell dr to set date_string to its year & "-" & (its month as integer) & "-" & its day as rich text
	set sbj to subject of i
	tell application "System Events"
		tell application process "Mail"
			click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
			delay 1
			select
			keystroke date_string & "_" & sbj
			keystroke return
		end tell
	end tell
end tell



There is no inherent AppleScript command for the 'Export as PDF' option in Mail.app.

This means you cannot script this directly (e.g. tell application "Mail" to export as pdf...")

The best you can do is a UI script that takes the currently highlighted message and effectively clicks the relevant menu item for you. Kludgy, at best but it's the only way I can see to do what you want.

This should get you started, but be warned that UI scripting is fraught with problems.

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions

tell application "Mail"
	activate
	delay 0.2
	set i to item 1 of (get selection)
	set dr to date received of i
	tell dr to set date_string to its year & "-" & (its month as integer) & "-" & its day as rich text
	set sbj to subject of i
	tell application "System Events"
		tell application process "Mail"
			click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
			keystroke date_string & "_" & sbj
			keystroke return
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

The script is pretty straightforward - about the only thing I can think of is a race condition, where the script selects the menu and starts typing the file name before the dialog is ready for input - that would cause the filename to get mistyped, although it's oddly consistent if it always misses exactly the date component.

Either way, one thing to try: Amend the script to add a small delay:

			click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
			delay 1 -- add a delay here to allow the dialog to appear
			keystroke date_string & "_" & sbj

> Do you have any idea how we can repeat your script for multiple emails ?

My script was specifically written to affect the first-selected item only:

	set i to item 1 of (get selection)

That's because I'm using UI scripting and it wasn't clear to me what would/should happen when you try to export multiple emails to PDF at a time, so I forced it to work on one.

Checking it now, it appears that Mail.app automatically saves multiple emails under their respective subject line and does not offer any option to name the resulting PDFs. That's a significant hinderance.

It means with UI scripting you are going to need to select each message individually. Unfortunately, at first glance, 'selection' is read-only, which means you cannot instruct Mail.app to select a specific message prior to invoking the menu option.

Ultimately it's one of the reasons I dislike UI scripting. Things we find so easy to do manually rarely translate well. It would be far easier if Mail.app just added an AppleScript command to export a given message as PDF.

Ultimately, it may mean that another mail app might be the answer. Ironically, Microsoft Outlook looks like it has a way to 'print' to PDF, although thanks to MS's b0rked AppleScript Implemenation I can't seem to find the right syntax yet - I've only tried about a dozen ways, so I have a few hundred more before I get it right. grrrr

I tested the script that I posted back for Camelot, here, and it worked fine as written. It too, was no attempt at multiple message export, only the use of the added select statement to select the default content of the Save As field, allowing the keystroke command to replace it with the constructed content, and the return simply saves it.

When you select two or more Mail messages, and attempt to Export to PDF, it opens a standard File chooser where you pick the filesystem destination for the exported PDF items, and Mail briefly exports each message with the default subject line as the filename. This subverts your date oriented PDF naming convention.

The Export PDF panel, with its Save As: field that you see with one item is never presented, and thus the current script cannot work.