mbox_extractor.py

A simple Python script to extract emails and attachments from .mbox files and optionally convert them into readable PDF documents.

📦 Features

• Extracts all emails from an .mbox archive
• Saves individual emails as .eml files (if you want to skip saving .eml files, use the --no-eml flag)
• Extracts and saves attachments
• Converts emails to clean, human-readable PDF files (optional)
• Quiet mode for batch or automated processing

🧰 Requirements

• Python 3.7 or higher
• The following Python packages:

  pip install reportlab

🚀 Usage

python mbox_extractor.py --mbox path/to/file.mbox [options]

Arguments

Argument	Description	Required
--mbox	Path to the .mbox file to extract	✅ Yes
--out	Output directory for extracted files (default: extracted_emails)	❌ No
--pdf	Generate readable PDF files for each email	❌ No
--no-eml	Do not save individual .eml files	❌ No
--quiet	Suppress output messages (silent mode)	❌ No

Example

Extract all emails and attachments from inbox.mbox and generate PDFs:

python mbox_extractor.py --mbox inbox.mbox --pdf

Extract emails only, without creating PDFs or saving .eml files:

python mbox_extractor.py --mbox archive.mbox --no-eml --quiet

🗂️ Output Structure

If not specified otherwise, the script creates this structure for each mail in the output directory, similar to:

0001_subject/
├── 0001.eml
├── 0001.pdf
├── attachment1.pdf
├── attachment2.jpg
└── ...

⚙️ Notes

• The script uses Python’s standard mailbox module to read .mbox archives.
• PDFs are generated only if the --pdf flag is used.
• When --no-eml is enabled, .eml files are skipped but attachments and PDFs are still saved.

🪪 License

This project is released under the MIT License.