e-mail with attachement to pdf

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Hubert96
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e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Hubert96 »

Your software is really fine.
But I miss one thing, I had in Acrobat:
When i convert an e-mail into a pdf, I get only the e-mail-text, in Acrobat I also got the attachements included into the pdf.
Werner
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Confirmed (for version 8.0.333 of PDF-XChange Standard printer)

Even though the option "Convert attachments" has been checked via Settings > Advanced, in the PDF-XChange-ribbon in Outlook 2016, the attachments are not included in the PDF that results after clicking "Convert to PDF" from within an open e-mail message that includes one or more (PDF-)attachments.

Regards.
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Dimitar - Tracker Supp
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Dimitar - Tracker Supp »

Hello all,


There are some limitations here, and they are a bit confusing, so I will try to explain them, please let me know if you need clarification on any of the points below.

The successful conversion depends on the mail client that the sender is using.
It appears that each mail client embeds attachments differently, and not all of these can be recognized and converted properly. Thankfully this means that those it does work from, most of the big names (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc) all attachments will be properly embedded into the resultant PDF file.
In any case where you find that the email does not have attachments, please contact us and include a copy of that email, so that we can test converting and instruct the conversion plugin on how to properly handle that situation for a future build.

Do also note that we recently made some large changes to how this works and added support for attachments from a large collection of mail clients, so I recommend updating to the latest build to benefit from this.

After conversion, please open the PDF and then open the attachments pane to view all attachments that were in the original email.


image.png



Regards.
Hubert96
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Hubert96 »

I tried it out with an e-mail of an authority.
It really worked that the attachement was integrated.
BUT when I donot change the view mode (see attchement) I cannot notice that there is an attachement.
Attachments
SNAG-0001.jpg
image.png
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Shame on me :oops:

Practically, I never use this feature.

Myself, I was expecting that the PDF-XChange add-in was going to convert the e-mail attachments as additional pages in the resulting PDF. Instead of this, the attachments are just taken over in their original format as embedded attachments in the new PDF and you can (only) find them via the Attachments pane, like Hubert96 just confirmed.

Maybe it would be interesting to have a notification in case of attachments in the PDF...

Best regards and sorry again for my misunderstanding.
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello Willy,

Yes - attachments to an e-mail can be in all types of formats - so we can't expect to be able to 'convert' them all to text and add them as extra pages with content (e.g. imagine if the attachment was a bat file or a .reg one!)

And the attachments pane should open by default when you open a new pdf file for the first time and there are attachments to it.

Regards,
Stefan
Hubert96
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Hubert96 »

Hello Stefan!
The attachments pane does not open by default when you open a new pdf file for the first time and there are attachments to it.
Werner
Willy Van Nuffel
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Hello Werner and Stefan

Out of curiosity I also ran a new test with the latest version of PDF-XChange Pro 8.0.355.0.

Indeed, the Attachments pane does not open when there are attachments in a PDF that is opened by the first time via PDF-XChange Editor.

Regards.
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello Hubert96, Willy,

I believe such a feature (auto open of the attachments pane) was present in the Viewer, but seems to be missing in the Editor.
We have a FR ticket for this:
#3992: FR: Automatically display the attachments pane for files with attachments.

And I have just upped the priority on that!

Kind Regards,
Stefan
Hubert96
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Hubert96 »

Thank You Stefan.
Werner
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

You are welcome Werner!

Happy Holidays,
Stefan
bdenina
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by bdenina »

Hi I'm new to this forum and to using PDF X-change, just wanted to check if there's an update on this?

I just tried converting an email with a .xlsx attachment, the email was converted to pdf but when viewing the attachments pane, it still has the file as .xlsx.

By default, the Advanced settings>Convert Attachments is checked.

Please advise.
Last edited by bdenina on Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dimitar - Tracker Supp
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Dimitar - Tracker Supp »

Hello bdenina,


Welcome to our forum.

I think you misunderstand the meaning of this conversion. This is the way it suppose to work.
"Convert Attachments" means to add the attachments inside the PDF file.

The emails are converted to PDF format, but attachments will always remain in their original format.

If you want some file of the attached ones to be converted, you need to open it and convert it directly to PDF.



Regards.
bcarvalho
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by bcarvalho »

Are the attachments some form of industry standard?

Is there a way to separate the attachments out afterwards? Or a setting to simply save the attachments in the same folder where the conversion is targetted?
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, bcarvalho

No, this is not an issue with industry standard. We have no control over the formats of attachments, or their contents in email.

In most cases, it is highly likely that the attached files are intended to be viewed in their original format, or are a format which we cannot properly support the conversion of (in which case it would fail).

In other cases, there can be numerous formats which, though using a special extension for specific apps to recognize, are actually deep down, a format we do recognize, such as XML. This means that if we even attempt to convert them, you could end up with a pdf document that is simply a mess of xml in plain text. Not helpful by any stretch.

As such, we do not offer the ability to directly convert email attachments, only the ability to have them be attached to the converted email's document, which you can then open and work with directly.

If you wish to separate them out afterwards, it is as easy as:
1. open the document which has attachments in our Editor.
2. open the attachments pane (Ctrl+Spam message posted by BOT engine - ignore - to be deleted by admin+A)
3. Click and drag the attachments from that pane to a folder, such as your desktop, to extract them.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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bcarvalho
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by bcarvalho »

Thanks for the quick reply!

What I meant by industry standards was whether other applications could extract the attachment.

Let’s say we move to macs in 10 years. Or your company shuts down and the software won’t run anymore. Is there a way to access the attachments?
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: e-mail with attachement to pdf

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello bcarvalho,

Yes - attachments are added to a PDF file in a specific way, and that way is described in the PDF ISO specification, so yes - you can say that these is an "industry standard" for how attachments are added to PDF files, and we are adhering to it!

Kind regards,
Stefan
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