Extracting email headers from Apple Mail

It may not be too difficult with AppleScript. Probably much looping to cover all folders etc. I will give it some thought and try and get back to you in a day or two.

Is this a one off exercise or will you want to do it again?

How often?

Will it start from scratch each time or do you expect to modify the earlier output?

Below is an initial test script you can try.

Put a few messages in a mailbox entitled 'test'.

Paste the script into Script Editor and run it.

You should see the result in a file on your Desktop called headers.txt

My main concern is what to do about multiple addresses in To, Cc and Bcc - perhaps you could think about the format you would like for these.

I have yet to find a way to cope with no Cc addresses etc but this may resolve itself when I start looping through them.

tell application "Mail" repeat with lastMsg from (count messages of mailbox "test") to 1 by -1 try set thisMsg to message lastMsg of mailbox "test" end try set f to sender of thisMsg set ff to quoted form of f set t to address of item 1 of to recipients of thisMsg set c to address of item 1 of cc recipients of thisMsg -- set cc to quoted form of c set b to address of item 1 of bcc recipients of thisMsg -- set bb to quoted form of c set d to date sent of thisMsg set s to subject of thisMsg do shell script "echo " & ff & ", " & t & ", " & d & ", " & s & " >> ~/Desktop/headers.txt" end repeat end tell

This should work:

tell application "Mail"

set selectionMessage to selection-- just select the first message in the folder

set thisMessage to item 1 of selectionMessage

set theseMessages to (every message in (mailbox of thisMessage))

set listOfEmails to {}

-- End of Original set and beginning of new set

repeat with eachMessage in theseMessages

set theFrom to (extract address fromsender of eachMessage)

if listOfEmails does not contain theFrom then

set the end of listOfEmails to theFrom

end if

-- To field Extract

set toAddresses to address of to recipients of eachMessage

repeat with i from 1 to (counttoAddresses) -- The repeat won't happen if toAddresses is empty

set theTo to itemi of toAddresses

if listOfEmails does not contain theTo then

set the end of listOfEmails to theTo

end if

end repeat

-- BCC Extract

set bccAddresses to address of bcc recipients of eachMessage

repeat with i from 1 to (count bccAddresses)

set thebcc to itemi of bccAddresses

if listOfEmails does not contain thebcc then

set the end of listOfEmails to thebcc

end if

end repeat

-- CC Extract

set ccAddresses to address of cc recipients of eachMessage

repeat with i from 1 to (count ccAddresses)

set theCC to itemi of ccAddresses

if listOfEmails does not contain theCC then

set the end of listOfEmails to theCC

end if

end repeat

end repeat

end tell

set SortedListOfEmails to simple_sort(listOfEmails)

set ptd to path todocuments folderasstring

set theFile to ptd & "extracted.txt"

set theFileID to open for accesstheFile with write permission

try

repeat with i from 1 to count of SortedListOfEmails

writeitemi of SortedListOfEmails & returntotheFileIDas «class utf8»

end repeat

end try

close accesstheFileID

on simple_sort(my_list)

set the index_list to {}

set the sorted_list to {}

repeat (the number of items in my_list) times

set the low_item to ""

repeat with i from 1 to (number of items in my_list)

if i is not in the index_list then

set this_item to item i of my_list as text

if the low_item is "" then

set the low_item to this_item

set the low_item_index to i

else if this_item comes before the low_item then

set the low_item to this_item

set the low_item_index to i

end if

end if

end repeat

set the end of sorted_list to the low_item

set the end of the index_list to the low_item_index

end repeat

return the sorted_list

end simple_sort

You should be able to start from that.

I need to search and extract the following header information from all email sent to / received from email server, for example, @xyz.gov.in, in the following format:

Once you get the script to work, I would actually make a Mail Rule to filter out the @xyg.gov.in and put all of it in a Smart Mailbox, and then run the above script, adjusting it to your needs.

No, I can't use skype right now. But I am adjusting the script right now so that it will save it as a csv file with the format you need. But I would first filter out all the @xyz.gov.in by using mail rule and put them all in a smart mailbox as a start. It will be easier to then run a script on that folder.