Preserve Your Family Email Messages with MailDex

In the days before email messages, family members would send letters through the postal service. These letters, if cared for correctly, could last decades or even hundreds of years. Email helped precipitate the decline of letter writing because sending an email is easy, fast and free. But email are ephemeral, and are at risk to lost.

Vint Cerf, the co-inventor of TCP/IP protocol, opined to The Guardian, “We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future.” But every day, millions of personal and business emails vanish forever, or wind up in a bin of electronic information that is so complex and deep that it becomes worthless for understanding our pass or extracting useful information.

MailDex by Encryptomatic LLC is a Windows software application that helps you preserve an search your personal email history. It allows for an unlimited number of emails to be added to an unlimited number of projects.

MailDex, the Multi-Format Email Viewer/Search Tool

MailDex is available from the Windows Store, or directly from the publisher. Once installed, just click “New” to begin a new email archiving project. For example, you might want a project for your personal emails, and another project for your work emails.

Next, add the emails you want MailDex to archive for you. You can add a folder with emails, or add individual email files. MailDex can import emails from virtually any email client, including Outlook .pst and .ost files, Thunderbird mbox files, or individual .eml, .emlx, .msg and .mhtml files.

MailDex doesn’t ever send any information about your emails back to the software publisher, preserving your privacy. All of the archiving and storage of your emails occurs on your local computer.

After the short archiving period is completed, you can now search through your emails to find those that are important to you. MailDex also has powerful redering and export capabilities. It lets you accurately view email messages, and then export them to other more convenient formats, such as PDF, PNG, or JPG images. You can also export the content of the emails to an Excel spreadsheet, Word documeent, or even a XML file. Allowing to view and export emails lets you separate the email content from the email client software.

MailDex is used in many different situations. While it’s great for archiving personal emails, it has found a use in businesses, governments, museums, law firms, litigation discovery firms, even a presidential library, and many other situations.

Give MailDex a try! It’s free for 15 days followed by a full 30 day money back guarantee! There’s no risk. Let MailDex help you with your email problems today!

This content was created by Encryptomatic LLC, the publishers of MailDex.

Convert Emails to PDF Files with MailDex.

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Convert emails to PDF with MailDex.

MailDex software for Windows by Encryptomatic LLC helps you work productively with email production. Use MailDex to create indices of email messages. Search an index to discover relevant emails. Convert emails to into PDF documents. MailDex can convert emails to PDF in bulk or individually.

One of the things that MailDex does better than any other email-based production packages is accurately render emails into PDF documents.

MailDex provides numerous options that decide how emails are rendered, and how file attachments are handled.

With MailDex you can choose to convert common file attachments as part of the PDF document image, or embed the attachments within the PDF so they can be extracted later. Embedding email file attachments within the PDF improves transportability of the document and preserves the contextual relationship between the email message and the file attachment.

Supported Email to PDF Conversion Formats

PST to PDF

OST to PDF

OLM to PDF

EML to PDF

EMLX to PDF

MBOX to PDF

MSG to PDF

MHT to PDF

Email to PDF Conversion Options

  • Email to Single PDF
  • Multiple Emails to Single PDF
  • Multiple Emails to Multiple PDF’s

Email Attachment processing options include:

  • File attachments embedded within the PDF
  • Attachments converted into PDF image
  • Attachments extracted to a folder
  • Attachments ignored and not processed.
  • Only Extract attachments

Naming PDF Files

MailDex allows you to give a special naming convention to PDF documents created from emails. You can use many different portions of email metadata to provide a name scheme, including subject, sender, receiver, date, or even apply a sequential number.

MailDex gives you control over PDF naming.

Configuring PDF Page Size

MailDex gives full control over PDF document page size

By editing the export profile (for example Single PDF – Attachments Embedded), you can change the page width, height and orientation of the PDF document.

Create your own customized MailDex export profiles. For example, if you need PDF images that print to legal page size, simply change the page size to legal.

This video from our support team shows the process of converting email to PDF. Although it focuses on OLM to PDF, the process is the same while converting from of the supported email documents to PDF.

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Exporting Emails to Files with a Custom Naming Scheme

MailDex software by Encryptomatic LLC is a multi-format email viewer with indexing and conversion functionality.

You can use MailDex to create a searchable index of Outlook .pst, .ost, .msg, emails, as well as .mbox and .eml email files.

MailDex also lets you convert emails to PDF and other file formats. These files can be given a custom name that includes information from the email. For example, you may want the file name to include the email address of the sender, or the received date, or the subject.

MailDex setup page for creating a custom naming plan for exported email files.
MailDex lets you customize email file names during export operations.

To access this setting in MailDex, go to Export > Edit profiles.

Select ‘File Naming Schema.’ The ‘Export File Naming Schema Editor’ window will appear.

You can drag the elements into any order you wish. You can also add text directly to the element file.

Elements with a small down arrow on the right side can be clicked on to view additional settings.

Custom file naming schema for email with MailDex. Drag and drop elements.
MailDex Export File Naming Schema Editor.

When you have your naming scheme constructed as you want it, click OK to save.

Remember that file naming schema can be set for each export profile. You can have as many export profiles as you need.

For example, you could have a PDF export profile that always exports file names with the sender’s email address and sent date. You could also have another PDF export profile that exports files with the recipient’s email address and subject.

We hope this helps give you an idea of how to use MessageExport’s file naming capabilities. Let us know how MailDex helps you in your work, and how we can make it even better for you.

How to Search Email File Attachments

Search common email file attachments with MailDex

MailDex by Encryptomatic LLC is a Windows software application that indexes email content, including Outlook PST, OST, MSG and MBOX, EML email files. People use MailDex to search and organize email content. It can also be used to export email content to different text formats (txt, html, csv) and image formats like PDF, GIF, JPG, TIF, etc.

A popular use for MailDex is to search within some email file attachments for a match to a text string.

To follow along with this tutorial, download a 15 day free trial of MailDex.

MailDex download page and installer.
Download the MailDex installer for a 15 day free trial.

After installing MailDex, you will need to create a MailDex project. You can have as many projects as you like, and projects can be created or deleted as necessary.

Projects make it easy for you to organize email content. For example, if you ware working on three different legal cases, you would want to keep email content separate and unmingled. In this case, create three different projects, and delete them when your work is completed.

After creating a project, you can add email content to it. MailDex begins indexing email content as soon as you add it to a project. Indexing usually doesn’t take very long. MailDex generally indexes at a rate of about 12,000 emails per minute, however the time will vary depending on whether emails are text, html, rich text, and whether there are parts of the email that are hosted remotely.

Import Emails and Create a MailDex Indexing Project.

When MailDex has finished indexing your emails, you can begin to search them by going to the “Mail” tab.

The simplest way to search email for a string is to type in in the search box.

Quick search box on the MailDex “Search” tab

Simple search will look for your search term in the text of the emails. To search for text inside of email file attachments requires Advanced Search.

Click the “Advanced Search” icon from the MailDex search tab.

Here is where you can build complex searches based on a number of different matching or exclusionary criteria. You can also specify the content that MailDex will search, such as subject or sender fields, date ranges, matching AND or OR, and file attachment name, or file attachment content.

Searching email file attachment content

Save your Advanced Search settings for future use. Click “Find” and MailDex will search your email file attachments. Any hits on your search will appear in the email list.

If you have any questions about searching email file attachments with MailDex, please post them in the comments or use live chat on this web page to reach our support team. You can also call us directly by phone at +1-701-566-6731 x1

Happy searching!

Copying Email Fields to a .CSV File

MailDex® email manager by Encryptomatic LLC is a Windows software tool for managing and indexing email content. Use MailDex to quickly search across thousands, or even millions, of email messages.

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MailDex lets you convert emails to a .CSV (comma separated values) file which can then be used in different spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc. Once the email data has been imported to a spreadsheet, it can be manipulated and scrutinized in different ways.

Use MailDex to manage email and convert to CSV files.

One common use case for importing email into a spreadsheet is for graphing and analysis. Another use case is to capture email addresses from archived emails.

Converting email to CSV requires a few basic steps.

First, install MailDex (a 15 day free trial is available for evaluation purposes). Create a “Index Project” and add email content to the project. MailDex lets you add email from many common mail formats, including Outlook .pst, .ost. .msg, Thunderbird .eml files, and .mbox email files common to Gmail, Thunderbird and other email providers.

After the emails are added to a MailDex project and indexed, you create search the content to discover the emails you want to convert to .CSV.

In this example, lets find all emails that contain the word “Snow.” From the “Search” tab, type a term into the search box.

Searching emails with MailDex

MailDex will populate the maillist with all email messages in the index containing this term.

In our example, lets chose ten emails to convert to a .csv file. To choose an individual email, hold the Windows Control button and click on the individual emails you want to convert. Note: To select all emails, click in the maillist and type control-A.

Selecting emails in MailDex

Now that emails have been selected, we can save them to a .CSV file. This is done from the “Mail” tab, where we will select the “Export to CSV” export profile.

Choose CSV export format, then click the “Export” button.

MailDex will prompt us to enter a location and name for the .CSV file. I’ll call mine “emails.csv”

You now have a .csv file you can open in a spreadsheet.

How to open a .csv file in Excel

Here’s what you should know before you open a .csv file containing email data in Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet.

If you simply click on the csv file, it may not import correctly. You may find that data fields are not separated.

Importing a .csv file in Excel is easy, but you need to know the simple steps to get the best result.

Open a new Excel spreadsheet (do not click on the email.csv file). Choose the Data tab, then “From Text/CSV,” as in this image.

Opening a .csv file in Excel: Data > From Text/CSV

You will be prompted by Excel to choose an a .csv file. Go ahead and do that.

Importing CSV to Excel

Excel will give you a preview of the data in the CSV file. Notice in our example that MailDex has separated the email data into many different columns, including file attachment file names, from name, from email address, email subject, submit date and time, recipient, etc.

Click Excel’s “Load” button and the email data will be loaded into Excel from the .CSV file created by MailDex.

You are now ready to manipulate the email data in your spreadsheet!

If you have any questions about Email-to-CSV export, please post in the comments below. You can also reach out to the MailDex support team. We will be glad to help you during your MailDex free trial!

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Saving Emails to a Single PDF Document with MailDex

MailDex email management system by Encryptomatic LLC is a tool for accomplishing unique things with email that might otherwise require several different software packages. One of the many areas that MailDex shines is in converting email to PDF documents.

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Because email messages can either be very simple text documents or very complex rich text formatted documents containing multiple file attachments, converting them to PDF has always held challenges for software that would attempt the job.

Different email-to-pdf projects have different requirements. For example, should email file attachments also be converted into the PDF image, or should they be embedded within the PDF? Will emails be converted to PDF individually, or in bulk? Should there be one PDF document per email, or is it important to store multiple emails in a single PDF file?

Be sure to think through and answer the above questions before beginning any email to PDF conversion project or purchasing software to perform the conversion.

Converting Emails to a Single PDF File


MailDex is often used to produce emails to PDF documents in different settings, including law offices.

One of the MailDex options included standard in MailDex is single PDF creation from multiple emails. MailDex handles this situation two different ways.

First, you can select multiple emails and convert them all at once to a single PDF file.

The second option is to add (or append) individual emails to an existing PDF document. For example, if you are searching or gather emails over a period of time and want to keep them together in single PDF file, this function would allow you continue to add them to the PDF document as your work progresses.

Lets examine how MailDex handles both of these situations.

Bulk Convert Email to Single PDF

How to convert many emails to a single PDF file with MailDex.

Select the emails you want to convert.

Choose the Single PDF option from the export list, and start the conversion process.

Append an Email to a PDF Document

Another way to incorporate multiple emails into a single PDF document is to add them individually. This is done using MailDex’s “Add to PDF” function.

Append a single email to a PDF file with MailDex.

Select the email you want to add to a PDF.

Click “Add to a PDF File”

Choose the PDF file, and MailDex will convert the selected email and append it to the PDF file.

Pitfalls to Avoid in Email to Single PDF Production.

When customers have issues converting emails into a single PDF file, usually it is for one of these reasons.

  1. Under resourced computer.
  2. Not enough hard disk space
  3. Trying to save too many emails to a single PDF

Try to be realistic. A single PDF document with even 100 emails can become quite large. If you are attempting to convert emails from a 25 GB Outlook PST file into a single document, re-think your strategy. Try to find ways to break it up into multiple smaller PDF files.

Also be aware of the resources on your computer. If you are trying to product emails to PDF on a 32-bit Windows XP computer with 2 GB of RAM and an old 50 GB IDE hard drive, you’re going to have problems. High amounts of RAM, 64 bit OS, and a solid state hard drive with ample available storage space will carry the project for you.

We are here to help!

If you have any questions about how MailDex can help you convert emails to a single PDF file before you begin your project, feel free to reach out to our support team for advice.

Good luck with your project!

Forwarding and Replying to Old Emails Using MailDex

MailDex is the place where all of your personal or company emails go to become a productive, useful and searchable archive. MailDex is project-based, which means you can use it to group emails into separate areas, removing completed projects from the index. Use MailDex to manage millions of emails, or just a few thousand important emails.

Replying to an email that has been indexed in MailDex

If you find an email that is appropriate to forward or respond to, MailDex can call your default Windows email application. It will pass the text of the indexed message to your email client.

To forward or reply to an email that has been index in MailDex, first click on the message so it is shown in the viewing pane.

Next, go to the Mail tab and select either Reply, Reply All, or Forward.

MailDex will then pass the text to your default Windows email client. In our example above, we have passed the archived email text over to the popular Thunderbird email client. MailDex will also work with Microsoft Outlook and most other email clients.

MailDex email archiver free trial.

Post your questions below. We’re always glad to hear from you.