I don't like storing email messages in HTML format, as this takes up a mahoosive amount of disk space. Is there any way I can strip HTML and other formatting from emails in Mail.app before archiving them? Many thanks!
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10)
Mail/Preferences/Viewing - uncheck Load remote content in messages.
Thank you, but that's not it. That removes pictures or other content stored remotely - but doesn't remove HTML formatting. I appreciate the suggestion however.
HTML is just text. If you are not storing attachments or embedded/remote images the email is not much larger than a plain text email.
Many thanks for taking the time to respond. However, unfortunately it's not that simple. Every time someone writes an HTML-enabled email, even if they use no formatting of any kind, the client creates two files, one a text-only and the other an HTML file. Even with no formatting, this usually doubles the size of the email, sometimes triples it or more. Some email clients (Mulberry, Thunderbird if you use an add-on) let you see the body parts and you can then delete the html file, leaving the text-only one in place. Mail.app doesn't let you do that visibly, but I was wondering whether there is a workaround.
This is what your last post looks like using HTML. It is not much larger than your post except for the HTML tags which add minimal additional size to the post. An HTML email would look the similar I've used many email clients but have never seen the two file scenario you describe. So I'm at a loss.
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<p>Many thanks for taking the time to respond. However, unfortunately it's not that simple. Every time someone writes an HTML-enabled email, even if they use no formatting of any kind, the client creates two files, one a text-only and the other an HTML file. Even with no formatting, this usually doubles the size of the email, sometimes triples it or more. Some email clients (Mulberry, Thunderbird if you use an add-on) let you see the body parts and you can then delete the html file, leaving the text-only one in place. Mail.app doesn't let you do that visibly, but I was wondering whether there is a workaround.</p>
</body>
</html>
You don't see it because most email clients don't show it. But you can test it by sending yourself two identical emails, one text only and one HTML-enabled, and see the difference in email file size.,
I tried myself what I had suggested, and sent myself two identical emails via Apple Mail with the above text. The first was text only, and it arrived as a 1.5 KB email. The second was identical but HTML-enabled, and it arrived as a 3.1 KB email, with two body parts: the first was text/plain and was 615 bytes, the second was text/html and was 1349 bytes. When I deleted the html body part (using Mulberry) the remaining email was 1.7 KB. These figures take on very different dimensions if the email is bigger or the sender uses any kind of formatting at all, such as different font sizes, colours, bold etc - to say nothing of embedded GIFs or the like.
For me this missing feature of Mail.app is a deal breaker. But there may be a solution that I'm not aware of.
Of course the best solution of all would be for people to stop using HTML, images or formatting in their emails. Emails were only ever intended to be text only. But I know that battle is well and truly lost.
Removing HTML in Mail
