Postbox

Obsidian plugin that imports .eml and .msg email files and turns them into native Markdown notes: the HTML body becomes clean Markdown, attachments are saved to disk and linked, inline images render in place, and a structured YAML frontmatter makes every note Dataview-friendly.

Desktop only. The plugin works on .eml/.msg files already on disk, with no Outlook, IMAP, or Exchange connection.

Installation

From Obsidian (once approved in the community store): open Settings, go to Community plugins, browse, search for "Postbox", install it, then enable it.

Manual install: download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release, put them in your vault under .obsidian/plugins/postbox/, then enable the plugin in Settings.

Features

• Import .eml (MIME) and .msg (Outlook) files.
• Convert the HTML body to Markdown, keeping links, lists, and tables.
• Extract attachments to a configurable folder and link them in the note.
• Render inline cid: images at the right spot in the body.
• Write a YAML frontmatter with sender, recipients, subject, date, Message-ID, attachment list, and tags.
• Import manually from the command palette or the file-explorer context menu.
• Watch an external folder and import new files automatically.
• Skip duplicates by Message-ID.

Development

Requires Node and npm.

npm install      # install dependencies
npm run dev      # esbuild watch (rebuilds main.js on change)
npm run build    # type-check, then produce the production main.js

To try it in Obsidian, copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into your test vault under .obsidian/plugins/postbox/, then enable the plugin in Settings.

Settings

Setting	Default
Notes folder	Email/
Attachments folder	Email/attachments/
Filename template	{{date}}_{{from}}_{{subject}}
Date format	YYYY-MM-DD
Extra tag	(empty)
Source account	(empty)
Include inline images	on
Watch folder enabled	off
Watch folder path	(empty)
Open note after manual import	on

Filename template variables: {{date}}, {{time}}, {{from}}, {{subject}}, {{messageId}}.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.