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 --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.