How to extract email addresses from message (not the sender)

Paste the lines with the * into Script Editor. Remove the * from the ends of each line and click the compile button to check the syntax. Select a couple of messages in Mail then click Run in Script Editor and see what happens. If you save it in your Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail then itshould be available for running from the scipt menu when Mail is active.

The script menu is for all applications, but where scripts are stored in the appropriate folders, only scripts for a specific application show when that app is active. If you are on 10.6.8, the folder is ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail (~ represents your home directory). If you haven't the script menu showing in your toolbar, should run Applscript Utility from Applications/Applescript to enable it.

(Note: I seem to have lost my Applications/Applescript folder. Also, I think that the user scripts system might have change a bit under 10.7 or 10.8)

Unfortunately, although the script I posted on May 10 seems to have done what Raltham was asking for, it was nonetheless seriously flawed. Here's an improved version, which takes into account the case where an email address is preceded or followed by a line feed (character id 10) or a carriage return (character id 13):

set theAddresses to ""

try

set TID to AppleScript's text item delimiters

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {space, characterid 10, characterid 13}

tell application "Mail"

repeat with theMessage in (get selection)

set theText to text items of (get content of theMessage)

repeat with thisItem in theText

if thisItem contains "@" then

set theAddresses to theAddresses & (thisItem as rich text) & return

end if

end repeat

end repeat

end tell

set the clipboard totheAddresses

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

on error

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

end try

the clipboard

Message was edited by: Pierre L.

Sorry, but I'm unable to reproduce the syntax error you are talking about. The new script seems to work properly on my MacBook Pro, at least under Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. I select a few messages in Mail and run the script from the AppleScript Editor window. Admittedly, the script is not fast, but it does work.

Could you give more details about that syntax error?

Sorry again, but I've had no problem compiling and running the exact code you just posted.

it might be a copy/paste issue - sometimes when you copy from web browsers you get html artifacts (non-breaking spaces, html entities...) that will confuse the applescript editor. try copying it into textwrangler and run the zap gremlins command.

well, the next thing to try (and I know this sounds silly) is to delete the phrase 'rich text' and retype it (don't copy/paste). When you compile an applescript it doesn't save as text, it saves using codes that represent applescript objects. if it saves with the wrong code (which occasionally happens for a number of odd reasons) it can throw a compile error even though the text looks correct. deleting and retyping clears the underlying code and forces it to recompile.

well, there's only a limited number of reasons it would be giving this error. I don't have my 10.6 partition handy, so please open the mail scripting dictionary and make sure that it supports rich text as a class rather than as a property of some other class. if it has its own heading in the Text Suite then it's a class, if not, it's a property of a different class and won't work the way you're using it.

That means that in 10.6 there wasn't a separate 'rich text' class, that was subsumed under the 'text' class. Delete the word 'rich' and it should compile and work properly.