Skip to main content

Saving E-Mail attachments to your Dropbox and then to your iPad

Since the iPad is not meant to do all the things we do with computers, I find myself now, when I encounter a task I cannot do on my iPad, wondering how I can make the iPad do it.

A good example :   once a week I receive an e-mail with a document attached.  I'd like that document to be in the GoodReader application on my iPad so it is available always, even if I am somewhere I do not have internet connectivity.

GoodReader brings in documents from Dropbox, so I wondered if Dropbox supported a way of e-mailing in a document.  After all, Evernote allows you to e-mail it content so it is a reasonable feature to expect.

Alas, Dropbox does not have that feature.

In my course of my research, I came across a little PC application, MailDrop from Michael Warren.

MailDrop watches your Gmail account and watches any e-mails belonging to a Gmail Label "Dropbox".  MailDrop then saves any attachments to your Dropbox account.

MailDrop is an app that runs on your PC.  To use it you have to :

1.  Add a folder called Dropbox to your Gmail
2.  Install MailDrop to your PC, and give it your Gmail login name and password
3.  Create a filter in Gmail so appropriate incoming e-mail end up with the Dropbox label

The filter I wrote simply takes any e-mails sent FROM my e-mail address, and TO my e-mail address and  that has an attachment, and applies the Dropbox label.

When I receive the document in my Gmail, I just forward it to myself and it ends up in Gmail so I can then bring it into GoodReader.  These last two steps that I do each week, I can do entirely on my iPad.  The portion done on my PC is entirely automatic.  I have MailDrop installed on a PC that never gets shut off.

That Gmail filter works with any e-mail I forward, not just the one I get each week.  I could, now that I think of it, have a filter to automatically label that expected weekly e-mail.

MailDrop was written long before the iPad came out, but it can be applied to solve an iPad shortcoming nicely.

MailDrop
Labels:

Comments

  1. ChrisMay 28, 2010 at 9:18 PM

    Why don't you just mark it directly with the Dropbox label rather than sending it to yourself? Seems like it is fewer clicks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MarkMay 29, 2010 at 9:43 AM

    I'm not the one originating the original e-mail. I am on a mailing list of people receiving it. And the act of sending it to myself is what makes MailDrop notice it and act on it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes Folder : My new note taking system

I'm in the process of moving to a new way to keep my notes. It would be best to make a separate post on my long time notetaking app, Evernote, and how it now disappoints me.  Bottom line, I no longer trust the company behind Evernote since it was acquired. My first inclination was to finally look at alternatives. like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. I was not enamored with any of them, so I gritted my teeth and stayed with Evernote. The situation made me think about how I use Evernote. To keep up additional posts on this topic, search on the tag Notes Folder Updates : January 24, 2024 and in updates noted here. Most of the things I store are quick notes, lists, online receipts for online bills, that sort of thing; kind of an online file cabinet if you will. If I were a doctoral student though I could see storing PDFs of papers and research materials.  If were working on a large project, then plans, communications etc. would all be there. Back when I began using Evernote way b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Recording your own notes with Google Voice

Note :   April 2016:  Frankly I don't know if this works anymore.  It is 7 years old. I stopped using this when Google Now became useful on my phone, and I could dictate reminders using it. I found a way a while ago to use Google Voice to record a personal note, transcribe it, and email it to me. A recent Lifehacker post "Five Things We'd Like to See in Google Voice" lists that need as their #5 request, so I realized what I'd figured out is not common knowledge. In GV's Contacts, create a Group "Special Transcription" To avoid listening to my standard voice mail when I call, I recorded a short voice mail greeting for this group simply saying "Record note now" I added a contact with my own cell phone number as the only number, and made it the sole member of this group. In GV's phone settings, I edited the settings for my cell phone. In the section "Direct access to voicemail when calling your Google number from th...
62 comments
Read more

Ten Years of Evernote

This blog post was set to publish exactly as the day begins on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. That is ten years to the day after my first Evernote  post. With my second note, I was already getting down to business; recording the agreement I'd come to on the phone on a minor business matter. My affection for Evernote has not dimmed since that day ten years ago. Since then, I've accumulated about 7.8 new notes a day. Ironically, I have needed to pull up only a few notes a year. Yet, when I need them, I need them badly and am glad to have Evernote all over again. My philosophy of what to capture is simple : If you encounter something you might remotely want to see again, it goes into Evernote. from a blog post June 1, 2015 I've written here about Evernote than any other topic.  Even wrote a now horribly out-of-date book. Don't get me wrong. If something better comes along that imports my Evernote notes well, I can be enticed to move.  But in t...
Post a Comment
Read more