Yeah, I had already looked at finding utilities such as pdfunite & may well end up using that. My main reason for NOT going that route is the following phrase in the most recent Order that I've received:

It may well be possible to do that with  pdfunite but the point for me was that LibreOffice can do it using Master Documents.

Also this:

I'm still in the process of learning how to use Master Documents, and I need to reduce all this new stuff if I'm ever going to get it all sorted in time.

I've made an early test with a Master Document and, frankly, it's a breeze. There will be lots of detail that will need sorting, but there is a solution in sight by going this route.

As you say, it needs a quick batch file to sort all those EML files.

Thanks for your input, soren - a lifesaver.

pdfunite *.pdf out.pdf

pdfunite is part of poppler-utils.

https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/po … .1.en.html

This is what i did to 3 of my email files to test. Doing it single file is going to be painful if you have over 100 emails to process, maybe a shell script of some kind could be adapted ??

mhonarc -single 1.eml > 1.html
mhonarc -single 2.eml > 2.html
mhonarc -single 3.eml > 3.html

pandoc --pdf-engine=weasyprint -o file.pdf *.html

This gave me a pdf file that was fairly similar to what the html and .eml file should look like and this is those 3 emails exported to one pdf file. Their is probably more switches in pandoc that could be used to format the pdf document better. I didnt use emails with attachments so not sure about that.

NAME
       mhonarc - convert mail/news messages to HTML

SYNOPSIS
       mhonarc [options] [arguments]

DESCRIPTION
       MHonArc is a Perl program for converting mail, or news, messages into HTML archives.  MHonArc can also be used to convert
       individual messages into HTML documents.

       The documentation for MHonArc is distributed in HTML format.  Due to its size and organization, it is not suited for
       manpage format.  Consult your system administrator for where the documentation has been installed, or see "AVAILABILITY" on
       where you can access the documentation on the web.

<snip>

The following produces a single-page HTML file + saves "pdfwD701WIjT3.pdf" in the same directory (that is the attached PDF in the email). The HTML opens in Writer just fine (I do not think much of the default display choices, but that is a personal issue). The HTML has an embedded link that can open the attachment (no direct use for the PDF bundle):

$ mhonarc -single 2023-05-26-0418.eml > 2023-05-26-0418.html

So, so far mhonarc looks to be a viable option.

PS
Trying to open an EML file in Firefox gives an option to open it in Thunderbird / Save to disk; not helpful. Chromium just displays the text content, and ignores all formatting / embedded content; also not helpful.

PPS
The issue is not to be able to *open* the file. The issue is to be able convert it into a format that LO Writer can open & display.

Thanks for trying to help.

I work under Daedalus:

$ apt search mhonarc
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
mhonarc/stable 2.6.19-2.2 all
  Mail to HTML converter

$ apt info mhonarc
Package: mhonarc
Version: 2.6.19-2.2
Priority: optional
Section: mail
Maintainer: Jeff Breidenbach <jab@debian.org>
Installed-Size: 7,601 kB
Depends: perl:any
Recommends: libdigest-md5-perl
Tag: implemented-in::perl, interface::commandline, interface::web,
 mail::list, role::program, use::converting, use::organizing,
 use::storing, works-with-format::html, works-with::mail,
 works-with::text
Download-Size: 847 kB
APT-Sources: http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus/main amd64 Packages
Description: Mail to HTML converter
 MHonArc is a Perl mail-to-HTML converter. MHonArc provides HTML mail
 archiving with index, mail thread linking, etc; plus other capabilities
 including support for MIME and powerful user customization features.

I'm about to go to bed, so this waits until tomorrow. Many thanks for taking the time & trouble to help.

I did find this program which may help, a Perl mail-to-HTML converter.

https://www.mhonarc.org/ Its in debian repos under bookworm too.
https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/mhonarc

So once the emails are converted to html you could build a pdf file from them??

Reason for Conversion

The 101 EML files have been sourced from Thunderbird-hosted emails. I wish to be able ultimately to place each one into a bundle of PDFs for supply to a UK District County Court "Document Upload Centre". The workload for that is:-

• EML => Libreoffice => PDF

If LO was able to load the EML files as HTML / EHTML (which is essentially what they are) then there would be no need for help, but currently LO loads each EML file as plain text. If I can convert the EML files into RTF files (as one example) then that would fix my problem.

I've actually already got each file also in a PDF format (obtained via Print in Thunderbird), but to easily be able to create a "PDF Bundle" will need to be able to load them into LO Writer.

Help

EML files were originated by Microsoft and are Plain-Text files in MIME-format. They essentially have the identical format to MHT / MHTML files, which was an early MS-derived format for saving a webpage in a single-page format (it was originated in the days of Internet Explorer).