history-lab / pdf2mbox

a command-line utility and Python package for converting PDF emails to MBOX format

pdf2mbox

a command-line utility and Python package for converting PDF emails to MBOX format

Installation

pip install pdf2mbox

Usage

# from the command line
% python -m pdf2mbox --help
usage: pdf2mbox.py [-h] [--version] [--overwrite] [--csv [CSV]]
                   pdf_file [mbox_file]

Generates an mbox from a PDF containing emails

positional arguments:
  pdf_file         PDF file provided as input
  mbox_file        Mbox file generated as output

optional arguments:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  --version, -v    show program's version number and exit
  --overwrite, -o  overwrite MBOX file if it exists
  --csv [CSV]      generate CSV file output

# from within python
from pdf2mbox import pdf2mbox
pe = pdf2mbox(pdf_file, mbox_file) # pe contains dict of emails

OS Dependencies

If you encounter errors installing pdf2mbox, please check the OS-level dependencies of both the pdftotext and python-magic packages to ensure you have the required libraries installed, as pdf2mbox utilizes both these packages.

Notes

• Assumes an email ends when a new email begins
• Works best with a standard email header (i.e., From:, To:, Sent:, Subject:)
• The initial development of this package was funded in part by The Mellon Foundation’s “Email Archives: Building Capacity and Community” program.