Can't drag and drop e-mail message to desktop in Lion Mail?

Question

Can't drag and drop e-mail message to desktop in Lion Mail?

In Snow Leopard and before I regularly dragged and dropped e-mail messages from Mail to a folder or the desktop. Now I can't.

In prior versions of Mail the dragged message was dropped into its destination as a .eml file. Perfect. I had the message and attachments where I wanted them in my file system. I could delete the message from Mail and move on.

Now the only way to do this is to select a message, go to the File menu and save it through the menu process. It's inconvenient. If I try to drag and drop the message it bounces back and is not dropped - anywhere. I haven't changed back to "classic" view, because I like the new layout.

[Aside: I don't like to keep all my e-mail only in my mail app. The content of my e-mail is what determines where in my filing system a message should be stored, not the fact that it's an e-mail message. And I don't want to duplicate my filing system inside a mail app just to store e-mail messages offline.]

I've searched Mail and OS X Preferences and found nothing on this.

How can I enable drag and drop of messages from Lion Mail in raw message source format?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Nov 6, 2011 7:59 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 18, 2012 5:35 PM in response to Jeffrey Souza

Despite all the Windows-esque "help" on this thread suggesting sudos and wipes and all sorts of gunk, its not about that. I have the same problem... but can see that it has something to do with messages that are part of threads. If I try to drag and drop a lone message to the desktop, its fine. If I do the same with a message that's connected to other messages (even with threads not checked), it won't. Don't go to extremes. Someone somewhere has the answer, and I'll bet its simple.

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Answer 2

Oct 25, 2012 6:48 AM in response to Jeffrey Souza

Same issue with Dragging & Dropping "certain" email messages and threads.

ISX 10.8.2 build 12C60

Issues:

1. If the messages are collated in a conversation, I can NOT drag the conversation to a folder on my hard disk or desktop.

2. If I open the conversation thread, I am able to drag and drop, "SOME" messages to folders with no issues, But there sometimes have 1 or more in the conversation thread that can NOT be drag & dropped. I select the message and drag and the "mail" travels with mouse but no "green +" to drop in folder.

The #2 issue is sporadic meaning it doesn't happen with all messages in conversations.

Any ideas?

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Answer 3

Mar 20, 2013 7:25 AM in response to TheDarkKn1ght

I've been dragging and dropping emails into other emails as attachments for quite some time but just this week that function stopped working. I'm still trying to figure out a solution but in the meantime I've found a workaround. With the email selected that I want to attach to another email, I go to Message>Forward as Attachment. That opens a new email with the other email attached. Then I can drag and drop the attached message wherever I want it and delete the draft.

This may not cover all the problems discussed above but hopefully it helps.

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Answer 4

jfaughnan

Level 3

869 points

Jan 2, 2015 5:24 AM in response to Jeffrey Souza

Drag and drop OS X Mail.app files to desktop to create a MIME encoded .eml file works in Mavericks for me. The resulting file opens in Mail.app, Airmail.app, SeaMonkey.app and MailRaider.app.

FWIW, this was the best discussion on this topic I found: http://www.ehow.com/info_12156886_eml-file-mac.html

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