I need to save e-mail to send as an attachment. It should be easy...
March 31, 2022 7:36 PM Subscribe
I need to send email (Gmail) to a document to send as an attachment. The only way it seems to save is "Complete Web Page" when I just need a plain document.
I have many emails (receipts) to send to the same entity, so I don't want to just forward each one, but want to send them together in a kind of package or bundle if possible.
Also, it looks like they might have just scanned it, so a cut and paste into a doc might really wreck the layout.
This seems like it should be ridiculously simple, but I can't figure a way. Thanks for any stress-free, simple way to do this.
I have many emails (receipts) to send to the same entity, so I don't want to just forward each one, but want to send them together in a kind of package or bundle if possible.
Also, it looks like they might have just scanned it, so a cut and paste into a doc might really wreck the layout.
This seems like it should be ridiculously simple, but I can't figure a way. Thanks for any stress-free, simple way to do this.
Chrome will let you print, then change the printer to "Save as PDF"
But I don't think there's a way to print just a subset of email. You have to save EACH email as PDF then attach them all. You may be able to merge all the PDFs into a single file, but that's extra work.
There is a free solution possible: PDFSam will split or merge PDFs, but you can't do it from Chrome. You have to generate the individual PDFs first, then merge them in PDFSam.
posted by kschang at 8:07 PM on March 31, 2022
But I don't think there's a way to print just a subset of email. You have to save EACH email as PDF then attach them all. You may be able to merge all the PDFs into a single file, but that's extra work.
There is a free solution possible: PDFSam will split or merge PDFs, but you can't do it from Chrome. You have to generate the individual PDFs first, then merge them in PDFSam.
posted by kschang at 8:07 PM on March 31, 2022
Also, it looks like they might have just scanned it, so a cut and paste into a doc might really wreck the layout.
I think you mean the email is just an image of a receipt, in which case you can just right click and select Save Image As.
If this isn't the case and you want the whole email, click the little print icon on top right and then save as a PDF. If that's not an option, provide some details on your browser and operating system and people can help get you a solution that will work.
posted by ssg at 8:10 PM on March 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think you mean the email is just an image of a receipt, in which case you can just right click and select Save Image As.
If this isn't the case and you want the whole email, click the little print icon on top right and then save as a PDF. If that's not an option, provide some details on your browser and operating system and people can help get you a solution that will work.
posted by ssg at 8:10 PM on March 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Similar to above (but since you mention needing to do many emails), a search for “gmail pdf add on” gives a number of hits for chrome extensions that might make it even easier
posted by itesser at 8:44 PM on March 31, 2022
posted by itesser at 8:44 PM on March 31, 2022
Would Gmail's functionality for forwarding emails as attachments achieve what you want? You'd select the emails you want and they'd be attached to your new message as .eml-files.
posted by Signy at 10:43 PM on March 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Signy at 10:43 PM on March 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
You will still need to do this for each individual message, but near the top-right corner of the message preview, there is a menu of three vertical dots, with the option "Download message" in the menu that comes up when you click it. This will download the message as a .eml file.
Forwarding multiple emails that you have selected, as Signy suggests, will work if you want to select a bunch of emails at once and create attachments for each one in one email.
If they won't take .eml files and you're required to submit the receipts in a specific format like a Word document, then printing the emails to PDF and then converting the PDFs to DOC files is probably your best bet. (If they take PDFs directly then you can skip converting to DOC.)
posted by Aleyn at 6:02 PM on April 1, 2022
Forwarding multiple emails that you have selected, as Signy suggests, will work if you want to select a bunch of emails at once and create attachments for each one in one email.
If they won't take .eml files and you're required to submit the receipts in a specific format like a Word document, then printing the emails to PDF and then converting the PDFs to DOC files is probably your best bet. (If they take PDFs directly then you can skip converting to DOC.)
posted by Aleyn at 6:02 PM on April 1, 2022
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On a Mac, anything you can print can also be saved as a PDF from the Print (not Save) dialog. Some browsers may override the default Print dialog with their own version; for example, Firefox does this, and tucks "Save to PDF" into the destination drop-down menu (the same place where you'd select a printer). Firefox also provides a "Print from the system dialog" option.
posted by aws17576 at 7:53 PM on March 31, 2022 [2 favorites]