CLOSED: [2016-12-23 Fri 17:18] SCHEDULED: <2016-12-23 Fri>
:PROPERTIES:
:CREATED: [2016-12-22 Thu 11:18]
:ID: 2016-12-22-email-to-orgmode
:END:
:LOGBOOK:
- State "DONE"       from "DONE"       [2017-03-17 Fri 11:30]
- State "DONE"       from "NEXT"       [2016-12-23 Fri 17:18]
:END:

Update 2017-03-17: Link to the method of Sam Flint

Silent update 2019-09-25: added to [[id:2019-09-25-using-orgmode][blog series "Using Org Mode Features"]]

Please do read [[id:2019-09-25-using-orgmode][my "Using Org Mode Features" (UOMF) series page]] for
explanations on articles of this series.

This article is for [[id:tags-emacs][Org-mode]] users who are looking for a possibility
to get emails into org-mode which is independent of their email client
([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_client][MUA]]). You're going to need access to your mail server for this method.

From time to time, I get tasks by email where the email body contains
helpful information on that task. Therefore, it is nice to have a
method that gets the email header and body into my Org-mode system.

--------------------

I do not use an Emacs-based mail setup, which would make this task an
easy one depending on your MUA solution. Therefore, I created a
workaround by bouncing relevant emails to a special email address I
use for forwarding emails to Org-mode: =orgmode@MY-DOMAIN.AT=

I am maintaining my own email server and I am (still) using [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procmail][procmail]]
to filter/preprocess emails. Please start with [[http://mailfilter.sourceforge.net/][mailfilter]] instead if
you do a fresh start. In contrast to good old procmail, mailfilter is
maintained and offers a modern interface.

So when I receive a new email to that specific email address the
following procmail filter rule matches:

: :0
: * ^(Resent-To|X-Original-To|To|Bcc|Cc): orgmode@MY-DOMAIN.AT
: {
:     :0
:     |/home/karl/src/vk-add-email-to-org.sh
: }

The filter rule pipes the email into the shell script
=vk-add-email-to-org.sh= which looks like this:

: #!/bin/sh
:
: ## generates an org-file-entry from the email sent through stdin
:
: ORGFILE="/home/karl/org/inbox.org"
:
: ## build email by adding input from stdin line by line:
: while IFS= read -r line
: do
:   email="${email}
:   ${line}"
: done
:
: ## extract header information:
: subject=`echo "${email}"|formail -x "Subject"`
: header=`echo "${email}"|formail -X "From" -X "Subject" -X "Date" -X "Message-ID" -X "To"`
: body=`echo "${email}"| sed -e '1,/^$/ d'`
:
: ## append mail header and body as new TODO heading to ORGFILE:
: echo "* TODO Email:"${subject} >> ${ORGFILE}
: echo >> ${ORGFILE}
: echo "#+BEGIN_QUOTE" >> ${ORGFILE}
: echo "${header}" >> ${ORGFILE}
: echo "#+END_QUOTE" >> ${ORGFILE}
: echo  >> ${ORGFILE}

Since all my computers have a synchronized version of my Org-mode
files, the mail information is appended to my current Org-mode inbox
file. This is the same file I use for getting in stuff from [[http://orgmode.org/manual/MobileOrg.html][MobileOrg]].

Refiling from =inbox.org= is the same process as refiling my input
from MobileOrg which I do on a daily basis.

So maybe this is also a handy workflow for you as well. I do like it
because it is completely independent of my mail client and the hosts I
am working on. Please drop me an email or comment below when you do
have remarks or found similar methods.

*** Sam Flint

[[http://samflint.com/about-me.html][Sam Flint]] published [[http://samflint.com/capture-with-email.html][his version of the same workflow]] that is using
fetchmail, procmail, ripMIME and Pandoc. It is an extended and more
elaborated version of my workflow.