Programs to edit received mail?

elyk · 02-01-2007, 11:19 PM

I'm looking for a mail client or a similar tool that will let me edit my received messages. The mail account is on an IMAP server and it has a quota. I'd like to be able to convert HTML to plain text, remove large signature blocks, etc. and save the messages back to the server so that I can free up part of my quota. Do you have any suggestions?

edgjerp · 02-02-2007, 01:47 AM

unless you have an extremely small quota, the space you could gain by editing the text of messages is minimal. even if to remove 80% of the text in each message, you would need to edit a very large number of messages before you free up any considerable disk space, as email messages are stored as plain text (=>1 character=1 byte). The header of a received message is often qite long as well (example: in a message of 3153 bytes, 2897 is the header)

Deleting attachments, on the other hand can potentially free up lots of space. I believe most clients can help you with removing these from the messages.

elyk · 02-02-2007, 11:11 AM

That's true, but I'm thinking I can free up at least 1/3 of the space by removing Outlook's crappy attempt at HTML:

Code:

<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

That right there is excessive formatting for a non-printing character, and I wouldn't be surprised to see lines like these taking up at least half of the message size.

Quigi · 02-02-2007, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elyk

I'm looking for a mail client or a similar tool that will let me edit my received messages.

I use vm as my mail client. (It's an (x)emacs mode; I think it stands for Virtual Mail.) It can retrieve your mail from an IMAP server, and key 'e' lets you edit any message you received. You seem interested in putting the edited message back on the server, and I don't know if it can do that. In normal use it gets the mail from one or many servers (and other sources) to your local machine, where you peruse and store it.

archtoad6 · 02-03-2007, 12:06 PM

Since IMAP lets you move e-mails around on the server, it should let you put edited mails BACK on the server. Never tried to actually do this, just speaking theoretically.

What a great idea! I'll have to check this out.

BTW, KMail's "Disconnected IMAP" account type may be useful for this. I have used it to back up an account on/from a dying server, but haven't got a replacement server to restore to, yet.

pixellany · 02-03-2007, 12:11 PM

Not sure of the motivation here.....storing things on your own local hard drive(s) will always be the cheapest form of storage.

Do you need a large volume of e-mail stored so you can access it from multiple sites?