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This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
---
Title : Viewing PDF, .docx and .odt files in mutt (as text)
Author : Remy van Elst
Date : 03-03-2019
URL : https://raymii.org/s/articles/Viewing_PDF_docx_and_odt_files_in_Mutt.html
Format : Markdown/HTML
---

![][1]

mutt is my email client at work. I like the simple interface, the speed and the
ability to customize the workflow. Email is synced with `offlineimap` and sent
via `msmtp`, addresses are in `abook`, and `calcurse` is the calendar for
meetings, no complicated setup there. One aspect I especially like is the
ability to view attachments on the command line right from mutt itself. Some
departments at work send emails with an attached `PDF` or `.docx` file that
contains the actual message, instead of just putting the text in the email
itself. Using `pandoc` and `pdftotext` in mutt, the text of the attachments is
displayed as a regular mail, no interruptions in my workflow by opening an
external program. This article explains how to set up your `.muttrc` and
`.mailcap` to use `pandoc` and `pdftotext` to view attachments as text in mutt.

I do assume you have a working mutt set up as I don't cover that here. [The Arch
Linux Wiki][2] on mutt is a great place to start if you haven't got mutt setup
yet.

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### Installing software

On Ubuntu both packages required are in the repository and can be installed
using apt:

apt-get install pandoc poppler-utils

`pdf2text` is in `poppler-utils`.

### .mailcap

Your `.mailcap.` file contains information for a mail client how to handle non-
text files.

In your `.muttrc` file you need to specify where this file is:

set mailcap_path = ~/.mailcap

The man page for `.mailcap` explains the purpose and format of the file:

Each mailcap entry consists of a content-type specification, a command to
execute, and (possibly) a set of optional "flag" values. For example, a
straightforward mailcap entry (which is default behavior for metamail) would
look like this:

text/plain; cat %s

The optional flags can be used to specify additional information about the mail-
handling command. For example:

text/plain; cat %s; copiousoutput

can be used to indicate that the output of the `cat` command may be voluminous,
requiring either a scrolling window, a pager, or some other appropriate coping
mechanism.

#### HTML mails

I use `elinks` for example to view html mails, the following line accomplishes
that:

text/html; elinks -dump ; copiousoutput;

Combined with the following line in my `.muttrc` to auto convert HTML mails:

auto_view text/html text/calendar application/ics

You only need `text/html`, but I also have calendar and meeting invites that I
auto view due to Exchange presenting those in some weird empty email with
attachment format.

Now, back to the PDF and .docx files.

#### PDF & .docx

The following command will convert a .docx file to text. The to parameter states
markdown, but the output will be plain text with markdown formatting.

pandoc --from docx --to markdown My_doc_file.docx

This works for OpenOffice as well:

pandoc --from odt --to markdown My_odt_file.odt

The following command will convert a .pdf file to text:

pdftotext -layout %s

Do note that in both cases non-text items might be lost, like images. Not a big
issue since my files are mostly plain text but do keep it in mind. Tables work
quite well, which surprised me. You still can save the attachments and view them
with another program (like LibreOffice).

Putting two and two together results in the following three lines in your
`.mailcap` file:

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document; pandoc --from docx --to markdown %s; copiousoutput
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text; pandoc --from odt --to markdown %s; copiousoutput
application/pdf; pdftotext -layout %s -; copiousoutput;

Restart mutt and open an email with an attachment you want to view. Instead of
using `s` to save the file you can now use `v` to view the file. Either
`pdftotext` or `pandoc` is invoked, and the plain text output is shown inside
mutt.

![][4]

> A PDF file viewed in mutt, as text

[1]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/mutt_djd.png
[2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mutt
[3]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212
[4]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/mutt_pdf.png

---

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