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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
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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

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