HOWTO: Send mail from Apple Mail to Evernote

[wolfjo 1]

Maybe I am missing something simple, but I cannot figure out an easy one-step way to copy an email into Evernote, and the manual is no help (it refers to using the Safari bookmarklet for some reason).

Things that should work, but don't, are dragging an email to Evernote from Mail, right clicking on selected text inside mail and using a service there to capture the selection.

The only thing that works right now is selecting text, copying it, and then pasting as a new note. Isn't there a better way???

If there isn't please add any of the above to the feature requests for the Mac version.

Thanks for any tips about this!

[ztwist 0]

I use a Mail to Evernote applescript (adapted from what's in the Veritrope applescript library). That is attached to a keystroke via the Fastscripts app.

So, Shift-Command-E pushes an email to Evernote, complete with formatted headers and a URL link back to the email in Mail.app. Works like a charm.

- Barry

This is what I want. Can you provide your adapted script?

[mdave 1]

Thanks, Justin. I love this script.

Regarding support for MailTags projects: I have already created MailTags Projects for all of my EN Notebooks (and identical Smart Mailboxes in Mail).

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=21457

One suggestion would be to have Email import from Mail.app route my importing messages to the appropriate EN Notebook based on my Project assignments (it is already carrying the MailTags, which are named identically to my EN tags), perhaps parsing the Project name to @"notebook name" in the email address.

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=15751

Now, if EN would allow us to email out with Notebook and tag names... :wink:

Great work. Your scripts site makes using your scripts easy for a novice such as me.

[EDIT]

[mdave 1]

Hey, wow. Is this adding new tags to EN to match the MailTags?

[EDIT]

[Veritrope 3]

Thanks for the kind words!

Right now, the script is just bringing over the MailTags and not the Projects. I wanted to see if a consensus emerged from all you heavy MailTags users about how best to export your information.

Anyways, those suggestions and comments are better left on the script project page -- so anyone who has thoughts on it should speak up like Dave just did! (And thanks Dave for your specific suggestions -- they really help!)

[mdave 1]

A great benefit to doing the tag work in MailTags is that the Mail interface is ideal more ideal than EN for tagging email message because of the sender/recipient and original date/timeline fields. This especially helpful for processing large volumes of messages.

[martinrice 6]

I've been looking for a way to send an email directly from my mail.app on my Macs to Evernote. Of course I know that I can copy the email and paste it or clip a rectangle, but what I'm looking for is a feature that DevonThink Pro Office has. It's a mail plugin that's installed when DevonThink is installed.

Then, when you're in mail, there's a choice in the Message menu that says Add to DEVONThink Pro Office. You select that and the email message is automatically sent into DevonThink Pro. It's extremely convenient. Is there anything like that in Evernote?

Thanks,

Martin

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You have an Evernote email address. You can find it by going to the web client & settings. Set that up as an email contact & you can forward or cc emails directly to your EN account. I do this often.

[jrcchicago 17]

You have an Evernote email address. You can find it by going to the web client & settings. Set that up as an email contact & you can forward or cc emails directly to your EN account. I do this often.

That's how I do it on my MacBook Air as well, but at the office, on a PC, EN installed an "Add to Evernote" plug-in into Outlook, which seems to add the email directly, without forwarding. But forwarding the email (when I don't want to just drag & drop the attachment) is such an integral part of my standard workflow that I never use the button.

[PeterLondon 34]

If your Mac has EN on it, then I just print the email to EN. Simple as that.

[barrymcbride 10]

I use a Mail to Evernote applescript (adapted from what's in the Veritrope applescript library). That is attached to a keystroke via the Fastscripts app.

So, Shift-Command-E pushes an email to Evernote, complete with formatted headers and a URL link back to the email in Mail.app. Works like a charm.

- Barry

[chirstopher 0]

Just saw a plug for "Evernote" on one of Apple's web pages. Looks potentially interesting, and free -- but what's the catch? (in the spirit of "no such thing as a free lunch").

Does your content get presented back to you with added advertisements? Your email address sold to spammers? Who's giving this away? And why?

[PeterLondon 34]

Christoper ...er why have you hijacked this thread? Create a new entry, and I'm sure you'll get plenty of answers

[Veritrope 3]

The shortcut is a great way to get emails into Evernote. One caveat: If you select multiple emails, they will be combined into a single note. If you want each message archived into separate notes, you can use an AppleScript.

FYI -- I am about to do a public beta of my own Apple Mail-to-Evernote 2.0 script, which preserves HTML emails (something the Evernote clipper does very well but has been difficult to implement via AppleScript), has MailTags support, and adds email attachments to the note in Evernote. I'll post a notice here in the forum when it goes live!

[Vijay Kumar 1]

It is much simpler.You don't have to copy and paste; you don't have to forward email to evernote.

Simply print the email by clicking the print icon. On the print dialog box at bottom left corner Select pdf option.The scroll down menu has an option "save pdf to evernote". Your entire email is now saved to evernote.

Vijay Kumar

[jweinberger 0]

I would very much appreciate any help or suggestions anyone can offer on this:

I have been using both Evernote and the notes native to the Apple platforms (in Mail on the Mac and in the Notes app on iOS, all synced via MobileMe) for different purposes.

With MobileMe going away, I want to move all my notes to Evernote. The problem is that I have hundreds, maybe more than 1,000 notes and just copying is, well, onerous.

It's easy to forward **some** notes as messages to the Evernote import email address, but other notes won't forward (I can't figure out why on that either), but forwarding so many is also tedious.

Does anyone know of anything that will allow me to bulk import these notes into Evernote? One way might be to bulk forward the notes as messages, but there may be others as well.

Again, any help, advice or direction is much appreciated!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

hi. welcome to the forums!

1. i wouldn't import them in that format, because evernote will not be able to index them for searching.

2. i wouldn't import them all, because it will just clutter up your account

3. i would think about giving thunderbird a try (i am considering it now myself). you can set up the account (if your mail is still on the server it will download them all), export notes as text files, and then drag them all into evernote.

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

One approach might be to export all your mail as files, and then import into Evernote.

EN Mac does not have a native file import, but there is an AppleScript solution provided by Veritrope.com.

This imports all files in the designated folder.

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

1. i wouldn't import them in that format, because evernote will not be able to index them for searching.

2. i wouldn't import them all, because it will just clutter up your account

Can you select blocks of msg in Mac Mail and export as text files?

If so, then the import will enter the msg text as Note text, and everything is indexed as normal.

These email msg need not "clutter" your Evernote account. You can assign the same tag (like "email" for example) to them. Then anytime you want to exclude these msg you can enter "-tag:email"

Putting all of your email into Evernote is a personal choice.

Some people like to do this to be comprehensive, and thus they have only one place/app to search.

Others prefer to put only key, important email that you may need later into Evernote.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

1. i wouldn't import them in that format, because evernote will not be able to index them for searching.

2. i wouldn't import them all, because it will just clutter up your account

Can you select blocks of msg in Mac Mail and export as text files?

If so, then the import will enter the msg text as Note text, and everything is indexed as normal.

These email msg need not "clutter" your Evernote account. You can assign the same tag (like "email" for example) to them. Then anytime you want to exclude these msg you can enter "-tag:email"

Putting all of your email into Evernote is a personal choice.

Some people like to do this to be comprehensive, and thus they have only one place/app to search.

Others prefer to put only key, important email that you may need later into Evernote.

i don't know about mac mail and msg. i think you just select them and export as txt files from thunderbird (again, this is assuming the files are on the servers to be downloaded). it has been years since i did it from outlook on my windows machine. i'm just passing along a possibility.

the emails would clutter my account. i don't want spam and other ***** turning up in search results of emails. ***** in ***** out. maybe it is just me who doesn't want to store all of my emails. i'd want to weed out a lot of the crud myself. if someone wants to import everything, that's fine with me. again, i'm just passing along a possibility.

[ShardArt 1]

I'm new to mac so not a lot of experience with AppleScripts. When you say files is there a limit as to the type of file. If I dropped several jpg or other image files will it create a new note for each image and import them to Evernote? Thanks - still lots for me to learn.

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

I'm new to mac so not a lot of experience with AppleScripts. When you say files is there a limit as to the type of file. If I dropped several jpg or other image files will it create a new note for each image and import them to Evernote?

Yes, the AppleScript will work exactly as you stated. As of Sep 7, 2011 Evernote has allowed all users to attach files of any type.

[RobLewis 26]

I just tried to drag a PDF attachment from an email message (in Lion Mail.app) into a note window.

It looks like it's going to work, as the little green plus sign appears. But nothing happens.

If I click the little paper clip in Evernote, I can navigate to the file and successfully bring it in.

Seems like drag & drop ought to work. Am I missing something?

[deverill 54]

It was mentioned briefly above but something I use almost every day that I don't see talked about much is email into Evernote. There is a "secret email address" that I just forward any important emails to. If I want to save the email I Forward and the Evernote address is in my address book so I type a couple of characters and hit Enter.

It's certainly not "one-click" but it has proven extremely useful to me and I wanted to mention it in case anyone else can benefit from it that my not have realized you could do that.

[braisford91 1]

I have a Mac and a windows laptop.  In Outlook on the Windows computer there is a button which allows me to add a mail item to Evernote with one click.  It's easy.  This doesn't seem to be available on Mac Mail and I am disappointed.  I'm not going to be delving into scripts and, while I have been forwarding the mail items using my unique Evernote email address and it is working well, I'd prefer an option that doesn't mean my messages have to go around the world before coming back to an app that is sitting in the same computer.

[Veritrope 3]

Hi there Pendolino!

I've seen that type of error on rare occasions -- I think it happens when Evernote's XML parser doesn't like the way the message source code looks.

First, I would delete that particular note from Evernote until we get things sorted (so you don't have to look at that sync error).

We should then probably compare notes in the comment section of the Script's webpage on Veritrope.com to diagnose it (and to see if anyone else is getting the same error). You can also privately send me more details of the mail message that isn't transferring properly using the comment form at the site.

Sound good?

[Veritrope 3]

You are welcome to try my Apple Mail to Evernote AppleScript!:

http://veritrope.com/tips/mail-to-evernote

[wolfjo 1]

Works great Veritrope - thanks for the suggestion! Happy to see your Evernote to DevonThink script as well - that will come in handy.

I really think that a drag and drop or Services capture would be more efficient here... Any comment from the developers on this?

[engberg 89]

Thanks for the feedback. We're looking at ways to improve integration with Mail.app in the future.

Thanks

[wolfjo 1]

Thanks for the feedback Dave -- good to hear you are working on it! The scripts help in the meantime.

[rongor 0]

If you copy the script into Automator you can covert it into a service as well.

Ron Goren

[wolfjo 1]

Forgot about that trick! Thanks Ron - will give that a try.... JAW

[Veritrope 3]

I did a quick test of the Mail script as a service, but it only worked when I selected text in the message itself. However, that was strictly a cut-and-paste attempt and people who actually have some experience with the new Services workflow might be able to make it work properly!

Let me know if you find the Services approach more useful and I'll spend some time converting more of my Evernote scripts!

[MacBerry 0]

Very handy script, thanks!

One other method is to drag the mail to the desktop, THEN drag it into EverNote, which attaches it as a file so long as you have a premium account. However, as far as I can tell it's NOT searchable

Mark

[geechorama 1]

Whenever I'm clipping an message from Mail, I hit cmd-A to select all, cmd-C to copy, then cmd-ctrl-V to paste into Evernote. Admittedly, that's three steps.

One thing to note, when you paste an email into Evernote using the above method, the email's "Subject", "Date Received", "Date Sent", and "From" are preserved.

Also, the source URL of the note gets set to the message:// URL to open it up again in Mail.

We have plans to add a native clipping button into button to Apple's Mail program, but don't have a timetable for it yet.

[Veritrope 3]

The Apple Mail-to-Evernote script also copies the Sender, Date/Time, and places a link into Source URL... also allows you to tag and select your Notebook on the way in.

It has the added virtue of being pretty close to one step. Using the latest version of the script, your keyboard shortcut and a quick "return" at the tagging screen will send messages into your default notebook.

Anyhow, it'll do until Geech codes us a Native Clipping Button!

[pendolino 6]

hi Veritrope - i just started using your useful script and on the 3rd or 4th use i came across a strange error. evernote's error dialog came up saying it was not able to sync the note that was entered from Mail.app using your script and when i opened the note i found the following static message with the body of my email right under it.

i tried it again to be sure it was not a fluke and sure enough the email caused the same problem. when i tried another later email there was no problem at all.

i thought i would bring this up in case it was a bug in handling some kinds of emails but not other. it may be because of a link included in the body of the email.

see below for error message.

[Veritrope 3]

The Public Beta is now live -- Click here for details and links to English and Japanese Language versions!

[pendolino 6]

this was the body of the email:

NOTE: If you purchased Yep on or after July 1, 2009 your license should work with Yep 1 and Yep 2.

Here are the Yep 1 upgrade offers.

Yep 1 to Yep 2: UpgradeToYep2975407 for $20 off bringing your final price to $19 (regular $39).

Yep 1.x to the Bundle: UpgradeToBundle6796543 for $35 off bringing your final price to $34 (regular $69)

You can go to our store directly at http://store.kagi.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi ... DCJ_LIVE&&

Best Regards,

Jim

The Ironic Software Team

[SaraS 5]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are all trying to do here, but I've been clipping emails into Evernote from Apple's Mail app without needing any sort of script for a while now.

I just highlight the message in the list of messages, hit Command+C for copy, then Shift+Command+V for the global paste to evernote command. Two keystrokes and I'm done.

This creates a new note containing all the text from the email message, as well as the subject, from, to, etc lines. It also puts a link in the Source field that lets me get back to the original email.

Now, I do have a premium account, so I CAN attach the email message as an actual attachment if I really want to save it. To do this, I just drag the message into the note I already created using the above steps. This puts it in the note as an .eml file (the same sort of file you'd get dragging the message to the desktop for instance). No need to drag it elsewhere first, just drag it straight into the note. Since the attachment isn't searchable, I usually do the procedure described above to put the actual text right into the note for searching purposes, then drag the email in for archive purposes.

A clipper button would be nifty, but as far as I can tell the basic functionality already works with copy / global en paste.

[Veritrope 3]

I am going to send you a PM with an email address to forward the email to -- I'll run it through the script on my end and see what the hang-up is.

[Veritrope 3]

Hi Sara,

As is often the case with many tech-related things, there is more than one road to arrive at the same place -- and that's true here as well!

Evernote has so many ways to get stuff into and out of it (Global Clipper, Email into Evernote, Twitter, Save as PDF, AppleScript) that, frankly, I'm not sure if there's one "right way" to get messages from Mail into it. I think it depends on what you want to do with your messages at the time.

The clipper is great and works well in many instances... but try highlighting more than one message before doing the "global paste". You'll get a note with the name of your inbox and the number of messages in it and the note body will have each message appended to the next (at least, that's what it does for me!). That's great if you want to combine many emails into one note, but not-so-great if you're looking to archive a bunch of messages individually.

What if you want to tag the emails on the way in? What if you want to put them somewhere other than the default notebook? This is where AppleScript (and Snow Leopard Services) are very helpful -- you can set up a function that works exactly the way that YOU want it to!

Does that make sense?

[pendolino 6]

I just highlight the message in the list of messages, hit Command+C for copy, then Shift+Command+V for the global paste to evernote command. Two keystrokes and I'm done.

i actually had not tried this method and was not really aware of it but after testing it, it seems to have parsed the email without the script's errors. thanks.

[erikhuber 1]

I just highlight the message in the list of messages, hit Command+C for copy, then Shift+Command+V for the global paste to evernote command. Two keystrokes and I'm done.

Nice find. This is a big help - thanks!

Justin / Veritrope - your script looks great and I will definitely give that a shot as well!

Great resources guys. Much appreesh!

[mdave 1]

I just highlight the message in the list of messages, hit Command+C for copy, then Shift+Command+V for the global paste to evernote command. Two keystrokes and I'm done.

This creates a new note containing all the text from the email message, as well as the subject, from, to, etc lines. It also puts a link in the Source field that lets me get back to the original email.

Is this still how EN functions?

[engberg 89]

Yes, I believe it still works this way.

[mdave 1]

Thanks, Dave.

I must be doing something wrong.

I highlight the message listing in Mail. I copy then focus EN then shift+command+V (paste without formatting). Nothing happens. I have also tried doing this with a blank note selected.

[mdave 1]

What I ~can~ do is to create a new note and command+V paste the email contents into it. But that is no shortcut.

[engberg 89]

The global Ctrl+Cmd+V hotkey (under the elephant in the menu bar) doesn't require you to switch over to Evernote. You should be able to just Copy from anything and then hit that hotkey. I.e.:

Select what you want

Ctrl+C

Ctrl+Cmd+V

(note that it's "ctrl", not "shift")