364445 - Save multiple messages as XML or HTML

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 102960

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Jean-Jacques Moreau]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

SaveAs allows saving an individual message as text (.eml).

However, it would be nice if one could save, not just one, but several email messages -probably as XML or HTML. Currently, I do this with Python/IMAP scripts. But it occurred to me it would be much easier done (as a user) with Thunderbird.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select one message
2. Select a second message
3. Repeat...
4. File/SaveAs/XML... (or equivalent)

Actual Results:  
Not available today. Can only save one single message.

Expected Results:  
The contents of the selected messages saved in the same file.

Here's a proposed bare format for saving:
<messages>
  <message>
     <title>...</>
     <date>...</>
     <recipient>...</recipient>
     <!-- paragraphs below created when format is "format/flowed" -->
     <p>...</p>
     <p>...</p>
     ...
     <p>...</p>
     <sender>...</sender>
   </message>
   <message>...</>
</messages>

The content of this file could then be easily processed via XSLT to suit individual needs.

One might also consider an option for importing such a XML file into a given IMAP folder.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

There already is a Save As HTML function, as you may have noticed -- but it's not very good, and limited to a single message at a time.

I think that this feature might be better done as an extension, simply because different people will want different DTDs for the mail data.

Comment 2

[Ryland Sanders]

I've been wanting this function since forever myself.

There's an extension called SmartSave:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2887

It will save multiple messages as separate files, but can't save them into a single file.