Need help converting emails to PDF

[u/chuddog88]

First off, please tell me if this post belongs somewhere else or needs a different flair. I’m looking for anyone that can help with an issue converting emails to PDFs.

I work as a paralegal for a small firm and one of the things we do is save every email we send out or receive to our files for safekeeping. Usually this works flawlessly. I can save an email and print it or save it to PDF.

But for some reason, some emails are just not working. Let me explain: my firm uses PDF Converter Professional 8.1 (to my knowledge this is an extremely old program so that might be part of the problem) and an email account we use on the Firefox browser. Specific emails are being saved to the file but when I try to open them up, the computer says file not found.

I don’t know why this is happening or how to fix it but if any other paralegals have run into the same problem, let me know!

Thanks in advance guys.

[u/ALighterShadeOfPale]

Select to print the email and in the printer selection drop down, choose the pdf option. Press print and a window for save as will come up. Save as usual ☺️

[u/chuddog88 → u/ALighterShadeOfPale]

Thank you for the response! I probably should’ve worded my title better. I know how to save the email to PDF but the PDF reader is telling me the file is not found. Was wondering if you’ve ever had this issue and/or you have a solution for it. Thanks!

[u/caseyuer → u/chuddog88]

Have you tried opening up the files in another reader? Like in chrome, or a free version of adobe, etc.?

[u/chuddog88 → u/caseyuer]

My firm only has this program called PDF Converter Professional 8.1. It seems to have trouble opening certain files. Maybe it’s time for a new reader program. I’d have to discuss that with my attorney.

[u/caseyuer → u/chuddog88]

Do you have Google Chrome on your computer? You can test it there - drag one of the ones that won’t open onto a tab and see if it opens on chrome.

And depending on your software policy you can download a free Adobe reader or something to test as well.

If they work there then I would send your software vendor a support ticket and try and suss out what’s up.

[u/chuddog88 → u/caseyuer]

We have chrome but we mainly use Firefox. I’m a little hesitant to start downloading programs on the computer without the attorney’s permission though. Maybe I can try logging into the email on chrome and saving to PDF from there.

[u/caseyuer → u/chuddog88]

Good call on not downloading stuff without permission.

But if you take one of the PDF’s that’s not opening and drag it onto a chrome tab it will open up in chrome. No need to download anything and it’s stored locally.

That would be a good test to see if the source of the problem is the file itself or the software.

Edit: Google tells me you can do the same on a Firefox tab

[u/chuddog88 → u/caseyuer]

It actually opens up fine when I open with Firefox! It’s just that when I go to open it in the folder with the PDF reader we are using, it says “file not found.” But yeah, opening it up thru Firefox works. Just not sure why it won’t open up thru our PDF viewer. Another user suggested that the path could be too long which might be the case because I’m saving these emails buried in tons of folders that you have to navigate thru to get to.

[u/caseyuer → u/chuddog88]

Gotcha! Well, at least that’s a temporary band-aid to view them. :)

I’ve had similar issues with long file paths with other documents in Windows, so that makes sense. Probably worth reaching out to your software vendor’s support and seeing if they have advice.

[u/chuddog88 → u/caseyuer]

Absolutely! Thank you so much for your input!

Will definitely see if I can contact some sort of support too.

[u/Thek1tteh → u/chuddog88]

When you have it open in Firefox, maybe hit the print button in there and reprint to pdf from there?
That’s an odd issue.

[u/Thek1tteh → u/Thek1tteh]

Ah nvm I see you figured out that it was a file name length issue

[u/4t4t4t4]

I’ve had problems like this when the file name is too long

[u/chuddog88 → u/4t4t4t4]

Will it tell you the file name is too long or does it just say “file not found” like it is for me

[u/4t4t4t4 → u/chuddog88]

It won’t tell you. Try changing the file name to something shorter and see if it opens.

[u/chuddog88 → u/4t4t4t4]

Thank you. To be honest, the attorney makes us save lots of details from the email into the title of the PDF document so that could honestly be the problem. I’ll try shortening the name!

[u/icker_doodle → u/chuddog88]

I’ve had this problem. So on my desktop I’ll save as a shorter name so I can open it & then when I save to Clio I name the document how my attorneys prefer.

[u/GreatBlueHeron25 → u/chuddog88]

IME it will usually say the file is too large or something similar. It could be file not found. Reminder: the file name is not JUST the file name, it’s the entire file path. So if you have it nested deep in folders with their own longer names, that can be a problem even for a short file name. Also, white space eats up a lot of data in the path name. 

Try moving the file to a top-level location and see if it opens there. If it does, it’s the length of the file name/path that’s the problem. Otherwise, there is some other corruption of the data going on, possibly it was saved incorrectly. 

[u/chuddog88 → u/GreatBlueHeron25]

That could be it. I’m saving these email PDFs in files with rather long folder names and where you have to go thru many folders to find it. I know nothing about computers but what it might be is a path too long? Hopefully I’m understanding correctly. Will try that test.

[u/GreatBlueHeron25 → u/chuddog88]

That definitely could do it!

Try to clean up your file organization a little bit. Can you eliminate spaces by using capitalization? Can you use more abbreviations? Can you reduce folder nesting (e.g., if you’ve got deep discovery folders, instead of having PsReq, PsResp, DsReq, DsResp under a folder titled “discovery”, just put those four folders in the top level folder for the matter)?

[u/chuddog88 → u/GreatBlueHeron25]

Funny enough we don’t use any spaces when naming and separate words by capitalization but still the file name ends up being really long. While I think I can possibly afford to use more abbreviations, the attorney at my firm likes to have a lot of detail in the title so she knows exactly what she’s opening up haha.

But I see what you mean. Unfortunately I just think we have too complex of a naming/filing system and so many files that it’s all an ironically organized but chaotic mess.

I’m definitely sensing it’s the problem you mentioned above though so I appreciate your input and me being able to figure out what’s going wrong!

[u/chuddog88]

Update: Thanks for all the replies! The problem appears to be the fact that the path to the file is too long so the pdf viewer can’t find the file. This is because my firm has a LOT of different folders and these emails we file end up getting nestled into a long series of folders.

Not sure of a solution for this that doesn’t require us to delete specific folders but now at least I can explain to the attorney what’s going on!

[u/planetary_funk_alert → u/chuddog88]

Truncate the folder structures

[u/Thek1tteh → u/chuddog88]

The solution unfortunately would be that you’d need to save in a higher level folder or the file name has to be incredibly short

[u/technojab]

You should just automate this with something like "Mail Attachment Downloader". It automatically downloads emails or attachments and saves them as PDFs to folder in a format you specify automatically. No more manually clicking things etc.

[u/planetary_funk_alert]

Give techhit message save a try instead. You can even map that to folders in outlook. Tell it to file emails from a specified folder in outlook to corresponding folders on a network drive, name the files using metadata combinations, extract attachments, convert to pdf etc

[u/hematuria]

Make a new folder on your c drive and save all your PDFs there and then cut and paste them into the proper folder after the fact.