How can I split incoming mail into several mails in Mail.app?

Question

I am receiving some bundled emails whose text bodies are delimited by dashes. I would prefer to have each body content in a separate mail, replacing the subject with maybe the first string of the body to identify it better.

In the good old days I would use fetchmail+procmail+formail+regular expressions to do this in the time the MTA is passing the mail to the local MUA.

Is there a way to accomplish the same thing in Mail.app using its filtering rules while talking to an IMAP server? I've checked /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts but didn't find anything close other than the script that creates new mail, but that requires user input.

Answer 1

Check out the "Burst digest messages" applescript. From its description:

This AppleScript for Mail will take one or more selected digest messages (messages formatted as either multipart/digest (MIME digest) according to RFC2046 or simple digest as defined by RFC1153) and extract the individual messages from the digest message - this is especially useful if you are subscribed to a mailing list in digest format but want to reply to a single message in the digest rather than the digest message itself.

(found this via HawkWings.net list of Mail plug-ins)

Answer 2

I may damage my reputation for this but if you run Windows on your Mac, perhaps you could import your mail into Outlook Express 6, close this and run express-archiver (download from expressarchiver.com) which is very powerful and can save each of your emails as a plain text file with all of the header information, encoded attachments (or them placed in a folder if you want). It also has powerful renaming options to give each file.

Not a Mac solution but may do what you want.