Use .eml files in the mail store or even just the extension

Use .eml files in the mail store or even just the extension

Whereas the mbs files in the mail store are now always one file per email/feed item, etc. and they are in fact much closer to an .eml file than an mbox file

Whereas the mimefilter IFilter mimefilt.dll in Windows search can handle .eml files, but ignores .mbs files

Whereas Windows Explorer extracts mail headers for .eml files but not .mbs files and can display them in the details view

Whereas Windows Search treats .eml files as kind:email, but not .mbs

Whereas simply copying/renaming .mbs files to .eml files gets the desired behaviour for Explorer windows, mimefilt.dll and Search

Can Opera use .eml files in the store, or even save the mbox format files with an .eml extension.

Behaviour could be an advanced feature controlled via a config file setting. I'd be quite happy to rename all my files and reindex my store.

Originally posted by nevillebagnall:

Whereas the mbs files in the mail store are now always one file per email/feed item, etc. and they are in fact much closer to an .eml file than an mbox file

An .eml file is like an mbox file (Opera uses the .mbs extension for mbox files while other programs use no extension or .mbx ) that only has one message (which is perfectly valid for an mbox file), but without the "From " line (and without some escape rules), yes.

Originally posted by nevillebagnall:

Can Opera use .eml files in the store

When the mail store type is at its default value, it should be possible for Opera to change to the eml format without too much work. But, you can set the default store type to the old way where messages are grouped the old way. The eml format doesn't support that, so it'd have to be limited to the single message storage type.

Originally posted by nevillebagnall:

or even save the mbox format files with an .eml extension.

Opera *could* do that. But, .eml and .mbs have different mime types and mean different things (as in, one mime type is more compatible than the other) when you attach them to a message. You wouldn't usually attach one from the store folder though, so when exporting/saving a message, Opera could give you the option to choose .mbs or .eml.

The downside to all of this though is that other clients like Thunderbird and Sylpheed use mbox but also don't give the files an .eml extension (they group more then one message in the mbox files though). And, if Opera used .eml, some clients that only support importing mbox files might not import Opera messages in the store folder if they have .eml extensions.

Originally posted by nevillebagnall:

Behaviour could be an advanced feature controlled via a config file setting. I'd be quite happy to rename all my files and reindex my store.

I understand the use case. But, I personally don't find this appealing. However, as an option, that sounds fine. But, if I had to implement it, I'd personally not see a strong enough reason to. So, +0 for me.

I tested with Thunderbird with the "enable windows search to search messages" option (or whatever it's called).

In addition to putting all the messages in an MBOX file for each folder, Thunderbird creates a folder_name.mozmsgs that has all the messages split up into single ".wdseml" files (with the message id for the message as part of its file name). wdseml files are just eml files with a different extension. wds probably stands for windows search.

So, Thunderbird duplicates all the messages on your drive, which does cause some extra hard drive space to be used. But, those email files have the attachments missing, so it's not really that bad.

I think I'd rather see Opera where it still uses mbs file storage but provides wdseml files for searching. (Opera as a non-default option can storage a whole month of messages in a single mbs file or all messages in a single binary file. So, Opera could only use .eml instead of mbs with the default storage type.)

As an alternative, you can browse to the mail/store folder in Windows Explorer, press F3 and type in the search field to search for you want. That will search through all the mbs files. If that folder isn't indexed though, make sure to index it so the search term matches content instead of just filenames. Or, press alt and goto "tools -> folder options -> search" and set it to search content in non-indexed folders. Just like with Opera, searching will work best if you have "make all messages available offline" (if you're using IMAP).

Thanks for the pointer to Thunderbird burnout426. A bit of googling later and I found out how it managed to get Windows Search to index the wdseml files. It was a very short step from that to getting Windows Search to index the mail fields in Opera .mbs files.

I haven't tested it with the other store options, but I assume this will only work with the default 1 eml per mbox store format.
It works great with the default layout, my mbs files are now showing up in email searches with from, to and date columns populated.

Required registry changes below.

-----------------------------Opera.WDS.Integration.reg-------------------------------------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mbs]
"Content Type"="message/rfc822"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mbs\shellex\{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}]
@="{b9815375-5d7f-4ce2-9245-c9d4da436930}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mbs\PersistentHandler]
@="{5645c8c4-e277-11cf-8fda-00aa00a14f93}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PropertySystem\PropertyHandlers\.mbs]
@="{5FA29220-36A1-40f9-89C6-F4B384B7642E}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\KindMap]
".mbs"="email;communication"

Good to know. Might try to play with this. Thanks for the idea.