Category: Mail Attachment Downloader

Streamline Your Workflow: Why Mail Attachment Downloader PRO is the Ultimate Email Automation Tool

If your business handles a high volume of digital invoices, customer data, or media files, you already know the frustration of the “download shuffle.” Manually opening emails, saving attachments, renaming files, and sorting them into folders is a massive time-sink.

When looking to solve this problem, many teams look toward automation. They turn to general integration platforms, specialized cloud email parsers, or rely on basic, built-in email inbox rules. But if your goal is reliable, high-volume document processing, a dedicated tool like Mail Attachment Downloader PROby GearMage changes the game.

Let’s look at how it stacks up against the other options, and where it truly shines.

Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

To be entirely fair, there is no single “perfect” solution for every business case. The right tool depends heavily on your budget, infrastructure, and security requirements.

1. Built-In Email Rules (Outlook/Gmail)

  • How they work: Basic filters within your email client that move messages to specific folders or forward them.
  • Best for: Casual users who just want to keep their inbox organized or flag important senders.
  • The Downside: They cannot extract data from inside a file, rename files dynamically based on content, or save attachments directly to a local server or specific corporate directory structure.

2. Multi-App Integration Platforms

  • How they work: Cloud APIs that trigger actions across completely different web apps when a new email arrives (e.g., saving an attachment to Google Drive, then posting a notification in Slack).
  • Best for: Multi-app cloud workflows where you need to sync entirely separate web applications.
  • The Downside: They get expensive quickly. Cloud platforms charge “per task” or “per operation.” If you are processing thousands of emails a month, costs skyrocket. Furthermore, passing sensitive business documents through third-party cloud data brokers introduces strict security compliance headaches.

3. Specialized Cloud Parsers

  • How they work: Web-based software where you forward your emails to a custom cloud address, and their algorithms extract the data and attachments into a structured format.
  • Best for: Completely cloud-native companies that need optical character recognition (OCR) or structured data sent to cloud webhooks.
  • The Downside: Monthly subscription models can be prohibitive for high volumes. Because they rely on webhooks, any temporary cloud outage or internet hiccup can result in missed files or disrupted data pipelines.

4. Mail Attachment Downloader PRO

  • How it works: A dedicated, secure program that connects directly to your mail servers (supporting modern OAuth for Google and Exchange) and processes your data locally or on your own server infrastructure.
  • Best for: Businesses looking for hyper-reliable, highly secure, high-frequency, and deeply customized document processing and local ERP/network drive integration.

Why Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Stands Out

While alternative cloud solutions try to be everything to everyone, Mail Attachment Downloader PRO is laser-focused on doing one thing exceptionally well: turning your email inbox into a hands-free data pipeline.

Here is why the PRO Version (available at gearmage.com/buymaildownloader.html) wins out over general market alternatives:

1. Keep Your Email Data Under Your Control

Many cloud automation platforms require granting a third party continuous access to your mailbox. Your emails, attachments, and metadata are often processed through external servers before reaching their destination.

Any security compromise at these external cloud providers directly exposes your proprietary business data. Relying on external cloud platforms introduces a layer of third-party risk that most IT departments would prefer to avoid. When you route files through third-party cloud intermediaries, a single security breach on their end puts your sensitive business data directly on the line.

With Mail Attachment Downloader PRO, email processing happens entirely on your own Windows PC or server or your cloud service. Your data stays within your environment, and attachments can be saved directly to local drives, network shares, NAS devices, or internal applications without routing sensitive information through another cloud provider. For organizations with strict security policies, regulatory requirements, or confidential customer data, keeping email processing in-house provides greater control and peace of mind.

2. Enterprise-Grade Automation That Runs Unattended

Unlike browser extensions, scripts, or cloud automation flows that can be interrupted by expired credentials, service outages, or user sessions, Mail Attachment Downloader PRO is designed for continuous, reliable operation.

The PRO Server edition runs as a Windows Service, allowing your workflows to continue 24 hours a day—even when no one is logged into the machine. Whether you’re automatically downloading invoices, archiving emails for compliance, importing purchase orders into an ERP system, or distributing reports across your organization, your automation continues running in the background without manual intervention. Built-in scheduling, retries, detailed logging, and monitoring provide the reliability businesses expect from enterprise software.

3. Powerful Rules Designed Specifically for Email Processing

General-purpose automation platforms are built to solve thousands of different problems. Mail Attachment Downloader PRO focuses on doing one thing exceptionally well. You can create sophisticated rules using virtually any part of an email, including:

  • Sender or recipient
  • Subject
  • Folder
  • Attachment filename and file type
  • Date received
  • Email body contents and attachment size
  • Regular expressions (Regex) and much more

Instead of building complicated, fragile, multi-step cloud workflows, you can configure advanced email processing rules directly within a purpose-built application.

4. Deep Data Extraction and Intelligent File Organization

Most automation tools simply download attachments. Mail Attachment Downloader PRO can actually understand the information contained within your emails and documents.

Using a built-in extraction wizard or powerful regular expressions (Regex), you can automatically extract invoice numbers, purchase order IDs, customer names, account numbers, dates, totals, and other business data from either the email body or downloaded attachments. That information can then be used to automatically create dynamic folder structures and filenames on the fly, such as:

Plaintext

Compliance\Invoices\2026\Contoso_Invoice_12345.pdf

or

Plaintext

Customers\ABC Manufacturing\Purchase Orders\PO-98432.pdf

Instead of dumping every attachment into a generic folder or cloud storage bucket, your documents are automatically organized exactly how your business expects them.

5. Built-In Document Conversion and File Processing

Downloading attachments is often only the first step. The PRO version can automatically process files after download, including converting documents into more than 50 different output formats.

Need to convert HTML emails into searchable PDFs? Archive reports as TIFF images? Process plain text into PDF? Automatically extract ZIP archives before continuing your workflow? Mail Attachment Downloader PRO handles these tasks automatically, eliminating additional manual steps and reducing the need for separate document conversion software.

6. Works with Virtually Any Email Provider

Unlike many automation platforms that lock you into a single ecosystem, Mail Attachment Downloader PRO supports a wide range of platforms:

  • Microsoft 365
  • Exchange Server
  • Gmail
  • IMAP
  • POP3

Whether your organization is cloud-based, on-premises, or operating in a hybrid environment, one single solution can automate all of your mailboxes.

7. Integrates with Your Existing Infrastructure

Not every business stores files in SharePoint or cloud storage. Mail Attachment Downloader PRO works naturally with Windows file servers, network shares, NAS devices, accounting systems, ERP platforms, document management systems, and other on-premises software. There’s no need to redesign existing workflows or migrate files into a cloud ecosystem simply to automate email processing.

8. Predictable Licensing Without Usage-Based Costs

Many cloud automation services charge based on the number of workflows, mailboxes, API calls, or monthly processing volume. As your automation grows, so do your subscription costs. Mail Attachment Downloader PRO uses straightforward licensing, making costs predictable and significantly more budget-friendly for organizations processing high volumes of email.

9. Trusted by Organizations Worldwide

Mail Attachment Downloader PRO has been helping organizations automate email processing for years. Businesses rely on it every day to automate invoice processing, purchase order downloads, report distribution, compliance archiving, customer document routing, and countless other workflows. It’s a mature, purpose-built solution that has evolved through years of real-world customer feedback—not a generic automation platform adapted for email processing.

Built from the Ground Up for Enterprise Privacy & Security

When dealing with corporate financial records, HR documentation, or proprietary business attachments, passing your data through third-party cloud brokers is an unnecessary risk. Mail Attachment Downloader is engineered with strict, zero-trust infrastructure security principles.

Here is how GearMage ensures your data remains completely airtight (as outlined in their official Security and Privacy Guidelines):

  • CASA Tier-2 Certified: The application is officially CASA Tier-2 certified, ensuring it meets rigorous, internationally recognized application security standards.
  • 100% Local, Direct Processing: This is a standalone application that runs entirely on your local system or corporate server. It connects directly to your email server with absolutely no middleman or remote cloud architecture intercepting, caching, or viewing your files.
  • Modern OAuth 2.0 & Token Authentication: The program defaults to OAuth 2.0 for major enterprise cloud providers like Microsoft 365, Exchange, and Gmail. It utilizes secure tokens instead of your raw passwords, meaning the app never knows or stores your actual master password.
  • Windows Credential Manager Integration: All critical credentials and session tokens are locked down inside the secure Windows Credential Manager for the specific system or service account running the tool. They cannot be accessed or manipulated without authorized administrative access.
  • Strict Transport Security (TLS 1.2+): The software communicates strictly via TLS 1.2 or higher over IMAP, POP3, or native Microsoft protocols (Graph API). It will only accept connections with valid, authenticated security certificates and rejects less secure protocols like STARTTLS outright.
  • Absolute Data Privacy: Your processed content—emails, documents, and attachments—is saved strictly to the folder locations you define. No data is ever sent to GearMage servers. Furthermore, any application logging avoids recording passwords or tokens, and the optional product improvement analytics on the PRO version can be completely deactivated with a single click.

Try It Before You Buy It

The best way to see how much time you’ll save is to test it out yourself. GearMage offers a fully functional Free Versionfor personal, non-commercial use, which serves as an excellent trial run in a business environment to map out your connection settings and see the filtering in action.

👉 Download the free version here: gearmage.com/maildownloader.html

Take it for a spin, see how smoothly it hooks into your inbox, and experience the interface firsthand. Once you realize how much manual work it eliminates, upgrading to the PRO version to unlock unlimited accounts, background service automation, and deep database integrations is a no-brainer.

Have Questions?

Every network environment and ERP workflow is a little bit different. If you have specific questions about deployment, security compliance, custom scripting actions, or which license tier fits your company’s needs, the team is incredibly responsive.

📩 Reach out directly via email to sales@gearmage.com or head over to the official GearMage Contact Page to get more information or discuss your technical requirements.

Streamline Your Inbox: How to Merge Varying Email Attachments into a Single PDF

How many times have you had to open an email, download three different attachments—say, a Word document, an Excel sheet, and a JPEG image—and then manually convert and piece them together into a single file for a report or compliance archive?

If you deal with high volumes of correspondence, this manual process is an absolute time-sink. Fortunately, you can completely automate this workflow. Using Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server by Gearmage, you can automatically convert emails and their multi-format attachments into one cleanly merged, single PDF file.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to set it up, along with tips on how to filter out unwanted attachments like email signatures or logos.

Why Merge Emails and Attachments?

  • Simplified Archiving: Store the entire context of a conversation—the email body and its files—in one place.
  • Audit and Compliance: Perfect for legal, financial, or corporate environments that require unalterable records of complete email threads.
  • Easy Sharing: Send clients or stakeholders a single comprehensive document rather than an overwhelming pile of separate attachments.

Step 1: Capture the Email Body

To make sure your final PDF includes the actual text of the email as the opening pages, you need to save the email text first.

  1. Open your Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server dashboard.
  2. Navigate to the Global filters tab to create a new filter rule (or edit an existing one).
  3. Ensure that the “Save as .eml” checkbox is checked.

Step 2: Filter Out Unwanted Attachments

Before converting files, you want to make sure you aren’t accidentally merging junk files—like social media icons from email signatures or small header logos—into your final clean PDF. You can fine-tune your rule’s filters to exclude specific files:

  • Exclude by Name or Extension: You can configure the filter to skip attachments matching specific extensions (e.g., excluding .png if you only want documents) or matching specific text. This allows you to exclude files by their full name or parts of the name (such as ignoring anything containing the word “logo” or “signature”).
  • Exclude Smaller Attachments (Size Thresholds): Embedded image content, like buttons and badges in an email footer, are usually very small. You can set a minimum file size threshold in your filters to automatically exclude smaller attachments (e.g., skipping any file under 10 KB or 15 KB). This ensures only actual, substantial document attachments make it to the final merge.

Step 3: Set Up Document Conversion for Varying Formats

Once your filters ensure only the correct attachments are being processed, you need to instruct the program to convert all these different incoming formats into PDFs.

  1. Under the Actions menu on your rule, click Add action and select Document conversion.
  2. In the list on the left, click on the Document conversion item under After saving file.
  3. Click the “Add conversion” button on the right.
  4. Select your From Type (the source format, e.g., DOCX, TXT, HTML, RTF, XLSX, JPG) and set the To Type to PDF.
  5. (Optional) If you receive multiple formats, repeat this step to add conversions for Cells (XLSX), Slides (PPTX), and Images (JPG/PNG).
  6. Crucially, check the “Delete source files after conversion” checkbox. This ensures your folder doesn’t get cluttered with the original separate files once they become PDFs.

Step 4: Combine Everything into a Single PDF

At this point, the software will have turned your email body and all your filtered attachments into individual PDF files. The final step is to bind them together.

  1. Right-click on the Document Conversion action you just configured.
  2. Select “Add Merge PDF files” from the context menu.
  3. Check the “Delete all source PDFs” checkbox (this removes the temporary, individual PDFs after they are combined).

The Result

Once this automation runs, the tool handles everything in the background. When an email hits the inbox, Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server filters out the junk, converts the important files, and builds your document.

Your final output folder will contain a single, unified PDF file. The first few pages will display the email body text, and the subsequent pages will smoothly transition into the rendered attachments, completely clean of clutter.

Going Beyond PDF

If your workflow demands other formats, the PRO Server edition supports conversion into over 50+ formats (including multi-page TIFFs, HTML, JPEG, and more). You can even check the “Encrypt PDF” option during setup if you need to secure sensitive data with a password automatically.

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.

How to Automatically Save Outlook Attachments to a Local Network Folder

Managing a high volume of incoming invoices, purchase orders, or data reports across multiple Outlook accounts can quickly become a manual bottleneck. If your business relies on downstream automation tools—like OCR scanners, document archiving systems, or ERP software—you need a reliable way to extract those files and place them exactly where they belong.

With Mail Attachment Downloader PRO, you can completely automate the extraction of emails and attachments, routing them directly to your local network folders.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to configure multiple email accounts, set up advanced rule filtering, and safely route your files straight to a shared local network folder.

Step 1: Connect Multiple Outlook / Email Accounts

If you are managing attachments coming into different corporate mailboxes (e.g., invoices@yourcompany.com and sales@yourcompany.com), you don’t need to configure separate processes for each.

  1. First, add your individual Outlook or IMAP accounts to the account list in the main program window.
  2. In the Account dropdown menu, select the <multiple@multiple> option.
  3. A chooser window will pop up, allowing you to check all the specific email accounts you want to actively monitor simultaneously.

Note for Server Deployments: If you are running PRO Server to handle this 24/7 in the background as a Windows Service, select <multiple@multiple> first, navigate to the Service tab, and click Install service.

Step 2: Create a Global Filter Rule

Once your accounts are linked, head to the Global Filters tab. Global Filters evaluate incoming items top-down. If an attachment matches a rule, the program executes the rule’s phases and then stops processing subsequent rules for that specific file.

  1. Click Add new filter and give it a descriptive name (e.g., Invoices - Shared Network Folder).
  2. Isolate by Account (Optional): By default, a global rule runs against all connected accounts. If you want this specific network routing to only apply to one account, click Add -> Filters -> Account, and choose the specific email address from the dropdown.
  3. Define Your Matching Criteria: You can isolate specific emails by subject line or sender. For instance, click Add -> Filters -> Email Subject. You can type search terms like Payments or Invoices.
    • Pro-tip: Using no quotes does a standard substring match. You can use logical operators with quotes to create powerful rules, such as 'Payments' OR 'Invoices'.

Step 3: Configure the Local Network Save Folder (Crucial UNC Paths)

The Save phase is where you control exactly where the attachments land. When you are directing files to a local network folder or network-attached storage (NAS), your path formatting matters immensely.

  • CRITICAL: Use UNC Paths, Not Mapped Drives. If you are using the PRO Server version running as a Windows Service, it operates in a background session that cannot see mapped network drives (like Z:\NetworkFolder). You must use the absolute UNC path format: \\ServerName\SharedFolder\SubFolder\
  • Enforce Unique Filenames: Always include the {ID} token in your Saved filename format (e.g., {FILENAME}_{ID}{EXT}). Mail Attachment Downloader uses multiple concurrent threads to download files rapidly. If two emails contain attachments with identical names (such as invoice.pdf), omitting the unique {ID} field can cause download conflicts or accidentally overwrite files.
  • Dynamic Folder Structure: You can dynamically generate folders on your network share on the fly. Inserting a backslash (\) into your filename format instructs the program to build subdirectories based on metadata. For example: \\YourNAS\CompanyFiles\{EMAIL_FROM}\{FILENAME}_{ID}{EXT} This rule will automatically organize your network share by creating a unique subfolder named after each sender’s email address.

Step 4: Include Email Bodies or Post-Processing Actions (Optional)

  • Save the Entire Email: If your downstream workflow requires the email message context alongside the attachment, check the Save as .eml box. This will archive the entire email file into the same target network folder.
  • Add Post-Download Actions: In the Actions after save section, you can add automated workflows to occur immediately after the file hits your network share. This includes converting documents (e.g., .docx to .pdf), unzipping compressed files, or calling custom in-house scripts to alert your ERP system that a new file has arrived.

Step 5: Save and Deploy

Click Save on your rule. If you are utilizing the PRO Server version to run this unattended 24/7, remember to open the Service tab, click Uninstall service, and then Install service to successfully push your updated global rules to the background system.

Your local network folders will now stay perfectly organized, updated, and fed with the right email attachments completely hands-free!

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Customizing filenames or email data using fields

Mail Attachment Downloader PRO versions offers you flexible file naming and extraction capabilities. This post explores how you can use the fields helper to customize filenames and fields used within the program.

How to open the fields helper

Fields helper button next to many text fields in the Rule filter window

The little [i] button (see screenshot above) next to many text input fields offers you the capability to pop-up the fixed fields helper dialog.

Fields helper popup

Fixed fields are those that are built-in to the program (see screenshot below).

Fields helper pop-up

Customizing fields output

Most text fields are pretty straightforward and are self explanatory.

Some text fields offer you the ability to customize the output. Below you will find all such fields available in the fields helper.

  • ATTACHMENT_COUNT[‘.pdf’ OR ‘.xml’]
    You can specify the specific filename/extensions such as ‘.pdf’ OR ‘xml’ and include other extensions that you see fit. You can then use this in the rule to filter out emails that the rule applies to.
  • Dates formatting – DATE, DATE_LOCAL, DATE_UTC, PROCESSED_DATE, PROCESSED_DATE_LOCAL, PROCESSED_DATE_UTC
    Each of the date fields offers you the ability to customize the date format specified within square brackets []. Example: DATE[yyyy-MM-dd] will end up formatting the date part only excluding the hours minutes and seconds from the date. For a full reference of what you can specify within the square brackets see here.
  • EMAIL_HEADER[FROM]
    Email header field offers the ability to selectively pick out a certain email header field by specifying them inside the square bracket.

Examples of customization

Many email download actions such as the following: Save .csv metadata, Merge PDFs also support the ability to append to existing files if they exist.

Example-1: A running daily log of all attachments downloaded

So for example, if you wanted a running daily history of all files that were saved and the email metadata for those files in a csv, you can do so by clicking the Save .csv metadata action and then specifying the PROCESSED_DATE_LOCAL[yyyy-MM-dd] with the date field truncated to just the day will enable the action to append to the same file.

Example-2: Merging all PDF files and keep a running log for the day

Fields helper button next to many text fields in the Rule filter window

We hope that this post provides you an insight into more of the powerful functions enabled by the program.

Support for modern authentication in Outlook-IMAP, Exchange and Google

Microsoft announced that basic authentication will be discontinued in their products starting October 2020. Google had a similar announcement in the same year. This applies to both Office 365, Exchange and Google, GSuite accounts.

To cater to this, v3.2 build 1049 introduces full support for Microsoft based second factor authentication (OAuth) and Google’s second factor authentication OAuth for cloud-based or hybrid environments.

This new build now includes support for modern authentication for these types of mail servers:

  • IMAP to Outlook/Live
  • Exchange (non on-prem deployments)
  • Google OAuth

Shown below is an example of a popup using Microsoft authentication. The program currently triggers this popup only if the following are met:

  • Basic authentication fails to work (tries basic by default always)
  • Password is incorrect

Need to move away from Basic Auth? If you are trying to move away from Basic authentication or are trying to force the program to not use it, we suggest you enter the wrong password and if you try to test the connection after that, it should popup the ability to use the second factor auth. Note that you need to be on v3.2 build 1048 for this to work properly. That will work provided your admin has configured support for this new form of authentication.

If you received the error the Autodiscover service couldn’t be located, please check this KB article for possible ways to mitigate this.

The screenshot below captures what this popup will look like…

Initial popup asking for credentials in a browser popup.
Requests access for email access.

If you received any errors at this stage, it likely means that the admin has not given this program permissions to access the specific scopes that are being requested (eg. EWS.AccessAsUser.All for Exchange/O365). Please contact or check online on how to change permissions to do so.

Once you have proceeded through the prompts you can click on Connect and Download to save the credentials. If you want to delete the account or the credentials you can click on the delete account button in the main program window.

For Exchange online or Office 365 accounts, we recommend going with the following default server settings.

Exchange online or Office 365 settings

There is a new checkbox in the settings above On-prem ONLY and we recommend leaving that unchecked. If you check that box, then there will be no popup requesting credentials.

That’s it!

Again, we encourage our users to contact support@gearmage.com if you have any feedback on authentication issues you may be having.

Nesting email rules and actions

Latest builds of v3.2 provides new capabilities such as nesting rules or actions. Make sure you upgrade the build to the latest before you proceed to read through this blog post.

This blog post explores how you can nest rules or nest actions like a PRO.

Nesting rules

Preface – Processing emails with Global filters offers the ability to save emails or attachments into different folders based on some criteria and take actions on them.

You do not need to learn about nesting (described here) for most common cases. Nesting is only useful for advanced cases.

If you are not familiar yet with the Global filters, we have a great blog post here that should help you get started.

Proceed to read on only if you are familiar with how Global filters work.

STOP here and read through this blog post to familiarize yourself with Global filters

This post is about how nesting rules can come in handy when you want to cover some advanced scenarios. Some examples where this can be useful include:

  • When no rules match for a specific email, perform certain actions such as move emails to an error folder that you can take a look at.
  • When you may have multiple attachments in an email each of which have different possible actions.
  • When you want to share a set of actions or email filters amongst many rules so you don’t have to re-type them all over again.

The global filters tab in the PRO versions offer you the ability to define three types of rule filters: an Email Filter, a Global Rule or a Negative Rule, Shared Action. The Rule Type dropdown (shown below) enables you to select the type of the rule.

Read on to explore the different rule types below by using an example.

Tutorial with an Example….

Example: Consider an example where we want to target all emails that have the term “Invoice ID” in the Subject. We also want to move the .pdf’s in such emails to a PDF prefixed folder and .doc’s in such emails to another folder prefixed by doc. Also, if no pdf or doc’s are present, we’ll move the email to an “Issues” folder. And lastly we want to use a Shared Action to save the doc/pdf related email header data (from/to/subject etc.) to a database.

Rule types in an email rule
Different Rule Type’s in a Global filter rule

Let’s start by creating a new Email Filter.

Go to the Global filters tab and Add new, in the popup select the Rule Type as shown above and change it to Email Filter if it’s not already selected.

Email Filter: This enables you to instruct the program to filter processing to either a specific email or to target a group of emails matching the filters you specify here. This rule does not, in and of itself, enable you to save emails or attachments to folders or even define actions that you can take after saving files. Those sections will show up disabled as a result.

Read on to see how Email Filters can have Global Rules as child rules…
An Email Filter that matches emails with the Subject containing “Invoice ID”

You can then save this rule and it’ll show up in the Global filters tab as shown below.

Global filters tab showing one Email Filter

Global Rule: This type of rule enables you to specify which attachments you want to filter down to and where to save them. It also enables you to define actions that you can take after saving the file. You can define a Global Rule as a standalone rule (at the root level) or as a child of an Email Filter.

Read on to see how you can setup multiple Global Rule‘s to save files to different folders

To create a Global Rule as a child of an Email Filter, right click on the email filter and add a new Global rule as shown below.

Add a new Global Rule as a child of the Email Filter defined earlier

Let’s have this rule save the email attachments that are PDFs to a “PDF” folder. This has a filter of Attachment count greater than and a filename option of pdf.

Global Rule that saves PDFs to a prefixed folder pdf\ as highlighted

Since this is a “child rule” of the Email Filter we defined above, the Global Rule will only run for emails with a subject that contains “Invoice ID” that we defined earlier. We have also setup a Mark as read action as shown above. You can add any other action like Move email to folder to move the email to a different folder if you want.

Global filters showing Global Rule that’s a child of the Email Filter

Now, let’s define another Global Rule that saves .doc or .docx’s into a different folder. Right click again on the Email Filter in the Global filters tab and select Add new -> Global Rule. Setup the Global Rule as shown below.

Global Rule: Save docx or doc extension attachments to a doc\ prefixed folder

At this point you should see Global filters tab as shown below (Email Filter being the parent with two child Global Rules).

Negative Rule: This type of rule lets you specify “catch-all” actions when none of the Global Rules match. To do this, we will right click on the Email Filter again and select Add new -> Negative Rule. This type of rule doesn’t offer you the ability to save anything (this will show up disabled).

Read on how to setup a Negative Rule under an Email Filter as a “catch-all” rule
Adding a Negative Rule

Let’s now configure the Negative Rule to copy the email to the “Issues” mailbox folder.

If no Global Rule‘s match for this Email Filter, move email to the ‘Issues’ mailbox folder

Lastly, lets create a Shared Action. Go to the Global filters tab and right click anywhere (not on the Email Filter like we did earlier as Shared Action will show up disabled if you do that). Then select Add new -> Shared Action.

Shared Action: This type of rule has no save options enabled but will have additional filters or actions that you can define. These actions are those that you want to share amongst many Global Rules.

Read on to see how to use a Shared Action to save email data to a DB

We’ll create a new Shared Action as shown below.

A Shared Action to save email data to a database

To configure the program to save to a database, refer to this blog post. We won’t show that here.

Now let’s add this Shared Action to the Global Rules we defined earlier. Multi-select the two rules in the filter tab and then right click and select Add ‘Shared Action’ to selected option as shown below.

Add a Shared Action to selected Global Rule‘s

In the popup that follows, select the shared action we called “Save emails to a database” and click OK.

That’s it.

Summary of the final setup for the example

Now we have setup rules to process the emails with the Invoice ID in the Subject with the Email Filter. Then configured child Global Rules to save PDF and DOC attachments to different folders. We also defined a Negative Rule that moves the email to an ‘Issues’ folder when no attachment arrives. Lastly, we configured a Shared Action for the Global Rules to save the email data to a database.

Nesting rules are a great way to take advanced actions

Nesting actions

Similarly you can nest actions inside a rule as shown below after saving the attachment.

The below shows how you can unzip a file, do a document conversion and then save to a database and run a command line operation.

automate email actions: unzip_files
Nest actions inside a Global Rule or a Shared Action

For more on this, read this blog post here.

Why did my rule not download the attachment or email?

This post will go over common troubleshooting steps to help you set up the correct email rules to get the behavior you want.

First off, this post only covers the PRO versions in depth. For the free version, refer to the free download page for instructions.

The assumption for the rest of this post is that you are using the global rules tab to setup the download.

So global filters are critical for the best use of the PRO Client and PRO Server versions. If you have not already setup global filters or rules, the recommendation is to do that as soon as possible.

Here are a few blog posts to help educate yourself about the PRO product and the use of global filters:

    1. IMPORTANT (READ THIS FIRST): Setup global filters for your email attachment processing. Learn about filters, extractions, save locations and actions inside a rule.
    2. If you work with multiple email accounts, learn how to set them up using global filters — multiple email accounts setup
    3. Configure the rules to save email bodies or attachments as PDF or other formats. 
    4. Understand the intricacies of setting up rules to extract data from emails or attachments. Then use that extracted data in actions.
    5. If you work with databases, learn how to save or read data from a database and use them in your actions.
Bookmark the tips and tricks page for tips on how to use the program.

Why did my rule not work?

To answer this and/or other questions like why the rule did not download the attachment or email, enable Rule Tracing.

The best way to troubleshoot any rule is to enable this new feature we have introduced called Rule Tracing. So rule tracing helps you  trace through what happened when a connect and download was initiated.

Rule tracing walks you through how the program decided to process the emails. It helps you understand which rules matched or did not match for every email or attachment that was processed!

Latest build

Only the latest build (v 3.2.1015 or later) has this new Rule Tracing functionality. So make sure you upgrade to this latest build.

Upgrading is easy. All settings are always preserved while upgrading.

NOTE for PRO Server users:  If you are running a service, uninstall the service from the Service tab first. Not doing this may interrupt the installation of the latest build.

  • Free instructions — If you are using the free version, just go to our website to get and install the latest build.
  • PRO instructions — If you are using the PRO versions, use the SAME link that you received in your license email to install the latest build. Your settings will be preserved with the upgrade.

How can you tell which build you are on?

To check the build you currently have, hover the mouse over the main title text (i.e. “Mail Attachment Downloader”) in the main program window.

version and build

You should see a popup with the version eg. 3.2 and the build 3.2.955.0 (955 is the build) as shown above.

How do you enable rule tracing?

It’s easy, just go to the Global filters tab and check the Rule Tracing checkbox (see the red text box highlight).

rule tracing

The search icon next to the Rule Tracing checkbox will not show anything until you run a Connect And Download session.

IMPORTANT: Before running a trace…

To make sure the program has a chance to process all email, do the following:

  • Uncheck the Exclude inline attachments checkbox inside every Global Rule that has the control enabled
  • Go to Global Filters tab -> Search in ->
    • Select Messages Since Last Download radio button if you are SURE there is new email that meets the criteria
    • Select All mail radio button to scan all email from the start of time. The program will then scan all email (this setting will apply for every account).
  • Check the Inline content button

Running a trace…

Once you have enabled rule tracing, you will need to run a connect and download to test it out.

But before we proceed, a little advice for PRO Server service users follows…

  • If you are running the PRO Server and a service, uninstall the service  first so you can troubleshoot the issue using a normal connect and download.
  • If you are having troubles with the service itself and the connect and download is working fine here’s what to do. The most likely cause for this is that you have not uninstalled and re-installed the service from within the program after changing some configuration. Config changes only take effect in the service after uninstalling and re-installing the service from within the program’s service tab.

Before running a connect and download, we recommend setting up the rules so you focus on the problematic email or attachment. To do so, you may need to disable certain rules (right click and disable them).

Or you may need to change the Search criteria (Search in… section) to All mail and alter the dates (Search between dates… section) when you want the program to process emails.

This way when you run the connect and download we won’t process all emails again but will just focus in on the specific email or attachment you want to troubleshoot.

Now click Connect and Download to initiate the trace and let it finish.

Analyzing the trace…

Once the connect and download has finished, switch back to the Global filters tab. Then click the Search button small search button next to the Rule Tracing checkbox.

This should bring up a popup window something to the effect of the below.

Email Attachment trace view

Now lets look at how to analyze the information presented in this window.

Step-1: Select the download session based on time shown that you want to analyze.

Trace view - step 1

Step-2: Select an email that should have downloaded emails or attachments or should have run rules or actions and you think there’s an issue with it.

Trace view - step 2

Step-3: Look at every part or attachment of the email and drill down into which rules ran and which rules matched or did not match and why.

Trace view - step 3

That’s it!

NOTE: Rules are run ordered from top to down (in the order they show up in the Global filters tab). So if a rule matched, no more rules under that rule will run.  You can change the ordering in the Global filters tab by dragging and moving a rule around.

With this you should be able to find out why one or more rules did not download any attachments. And then you should be able to tune the rule configurations to ensure that it does what you want it to do.

Process email and attachments – tips and tricks

Processing emails or attachments to folders is easy with the Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Client and PRO Server products.  

The feature table on the PRO page provides all functionality available within the product. This post dives into many of those PRO functions to help you automate mundane workflows in your business away. You can click through each of these functions being highlighted here to then dive into those functions in more detail. 

Global Filters and Phases

A key function of PRO functionality is the concept of Global Filters. Global filters lets you configure one or more rules to run every time an email or attachment in an email is processed.  

The program runs through every rule (top down) for every email (if Save as .eml checkbox in the rule is checked) and every attachment. When a rule matches an email or an attachment, the email or attachment is saved, data is extracted using extraction rules and then actions in that rule are run.

Each rule has four phases:

  1. The search phase defines criteria that tells the program whether or not to run this rule.
  2. The extract phase enables you to extract data from the email or attachment and also transform that data as needed.
  3. The save phase saves the file based on the supplied templated filename and folder. You can also use extracted information in the path giving you full control with the directories or filename of the saved file.
  4. And the process phase enables you to run many different actions to automate the workflow.

For more on this, refer to:

Rule Tracing How-To: Troubleshoot rules like a PRO

Troubleshooting Global filters has never been easier. Use Rule Tracing like a PRO to troubleshoot why your global rule filter did not work the way you thought it would.

If you still have questions or issues, see instructions here for contacting support.

Mail server connection setup tips

Links below will help guide you with mail server settings setup.

Still having connectivity or authentication problems? Here are a few tips:

    • Firewall or some antivirus can often prevent the program from directly connecting or authenticating with mail servers. We do not have guidance here for every firewall or antivirus vendor, so check with their documentation and/or contact your IT support to get past this.
    • Search our Knowledge Base for connectivity issues and how to solve them (eg. adding proxy settings in the program)

License activation or moving licenses

    • PRO license activation problems: Search our Knowledge Base for activation tips.
    • Moving license: Moving license from one system or account to another is easy. Just uninstall the program from the old system and move to the new one. You should be able to use the program on both the old and new systems for a short-period (~ a day).

Running for multiple accounts

This blog post explores how you can setup the program to run for multiple accounts simultaneously. This feature is only available in the PRO editions.

READ THIS
https://gearmage.com/blog/multiple-email-accounts-via-rules/

multiple accounts

PDF tips: Save emails or attachments as PDF

With the ability to convert emails to over 50+ formats, saving emails or emails with attachments in a single file or to different formats is a breeze with PRO Server. Note that PRO Client does NOT support converting to multiple formats.

READ THIS
https://gearmage.com/blog/convert-email-attachments-to-pdf/

Convert to PDF
Convert to PDF

Extract data like the Invoice number from an email

You can extract any data using the extraction wizard from the email or body and then use that in the saved filename format.

READ THIS
https://gearmage.com/blog/extract-data-emails-attachments/

extractions-wizard

Save extracted data to a database

Saving extracted data or files to a database could never be easier with the PRO Server.

READ THIS
https://gearmage.com/blog/save-emails-and-attachments-to-a-database/

Nest rules and actions like a PRO

You can nest both rules and chain/nest actions so one is run after the other with the PRO Server.

  • Nest actions (see below)

For example, unzip an email attachment, then run some other actions on the extracted data.

READ THIS
https://gearmage.com/blog/email-actions-unzip-convert-pdf-run-script/

nest actions

  • Nest rules (see below)

Nesting rules can help with reusing rules so you don’t have to repeat the same condition across many rules.

Nesting email rules and actions

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.

New Filter Features in PRO Server v3.2 build 978

Mail Attachment Downloader PRO and PRO Server editions offers email filters to configure the program to process emails and attachments in different ways.

This gives an introduction to Global Filters and explores some of the new features introduced in  PRO Server v3.2 build 978.

Overview

For an overview of how to save emails and attachments in specific folders please refer to this post before reading through this one.

What are global filters?

The global filters are a set of rules you can create in the Global Filters tab as shown below. This is only available in the PRO and PRO Server editions of the product.

Global filters apply to all configured accounts in the program (under the Account dropdown).

Note that to download from multiple accounts, you must pick ‘multiple@multiple’ from the Account dropdown. Otherwise the download will only run for a single account.

When is a global filter run?

For each attachment, a global filter is run to see if any filters you have specified within match that particular attachment.

How to make a Global Filter apply to a single account?

By default, global filters run for all selected accounts (when you select multiple@multiple from the Account dropdown in the main window).

You can make a global filter apply only to a specific account by editing the rule and then clicking Add -> Filters -> Account filter as shown below.

Screen Shot 2017-04-27 at 1.55.35 PM

This will make that rule run only for that account. Once you have clicked Save, this will also show up in the main list.

Moving rules

Each rule is run for every attachment from top down until a matching rule is found. The ordering of the rules in the global filters tab is important.

Once a matching rule is found for a specific attachment or body, then NO other rule is run for that attachment or body. If the email has other attachments, then all rules are checked again.

To move one or more rules, just drag and drop the rule or rules in the Global Filters tab.

Catch all rule, send auto-response

If you want certain attachments to be processed, then define global rules for those. But what if none of them matched?

Since filters in the global filters are run top down and ordering matters, you can now define a catch all rule towards the end of the global rule filters list.

This last rule will run when none of the rules above it have resulted in a successful match or download.

That way, you can, for example, send an email to the sender indicating that their email did not contain the requested attachment or data.

Enable / Disable specific rules

You can now enable or disable specific global filter rules. Just go to the global filter tab and then right click on one or more rules and then Enable or Disable them. Disabled rules will never run.

Setting download dates

The program starts downloading messages from an account from the start of time if it had never run a download from that account before. This is true even when Messages since last download was checked in the Search or Global Filters tab.

Screen Shot 2017-04-27 at 1.58.00 PM

If you want to change this behavior, you can set a Start Date above and also switch to Messages since last download in the Global filters tab.

What this does is that for each account selected in the Account dropdown (or multiple accounts when using multiple@multiple selection), the program will only download messages from that start date onwards and will only check for new messages that have not been downloaded or processed by the program.

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.