Drag-N-Drop Message Format

A little recognized feature in GNOME is the that e-mail messages can be drag-n-dropped from GNOME's Evolution to other applications. When a message from Evolution is dropped into Nautilus the message will be saved to the corresponding folder as an mbox file. This is useful, but probably not optimal, for a desktop environment.

To optimize this behavior the gsettings command can be used to change the default format as a PDF.

gsettings set org.gnome.evolution.mail drag-and-drop-save-file-format 'pdf'

PDF is a much better format for archiving messages to projects, linking to tasks, uploading to bug reports, or just use as documents.

In combination with GVFS PDFs of messages can be easily drag-n-dropped to a server application, a WebDAV folderfor example. Simply navigate to that target in Nautilus and drag the messages over.

This drag-n-drop is an effortless way to turn messages into documents which can be filed, sorted, archived, etc... beyond the confines of an e-mail account.