Automatically save gmail as markdown in obsidian vault

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I use Obsidian as my notes app of choice. Sometimes, for various reasons, the easiest way for me to capture information is with an email to myself.

For my end goal, I want to be able to automatically have some of my gmail show up as md files in an Inbox folder in my Obsidian vault, which is in my iCloud drive.

I have Hazel. I have dropbox. Also Keyboard Maestro and IFTTT and Zapier and a mac mini that is always on. I made a Zap that got things into a place where I could have Hazel move them, but then I couldn’t run the Zap because of something about gmail having strict rules for gmail.com addresses.

Has anyone sucessfully built a workflow that is something like “email to Obsidian?”

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Have you read this thread on the Obsidian forum on emailing into Obsidian?

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I hadn’t found that exact one @sylumer. There doesn’t appear to be anything actionable in there. This guy says he has a python script but he didn’t share it.

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Your final question above was:

That topic answers that question.

There was discussion of using web services like Power Automate, cloud storage, and Gmail aliases as well as Python. Many of the presented elements can be applied to your set of tools.

There are several ways to approach what you want to do. The choice of how comes down to elements of familiarity with the tools and how you want to trigger it.

Do you know how you wish to trigger your process yet?

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Ah, I see what you are saying. I tried some of the tools listed. Apparently Google has restrictions on what Make (which was Integromat the last time I used it) and Zapier can ultimately do with the data they access; I couldn’t connect them to Dropbox. I have no idea how to use Power Automate, but it is something I can investigate. I am not sure enough on how I would script this to use something like python. I was hoping to find some clearer prior art.

Ideally, my trigger is either an email shows up in my gmail inbox with a certain keyboard. OR I send the “remind me” emails to a service-provided email address.

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What about if you setup a mailhook and email your note to the mailhook?

I changed all of my Gmail modules in Integromat to mailhook triggers and use Gmail filters to send specific emails to the mailhooks.

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Could you elaborate a bit more on setting up mailhooks in Integromat? Thx!

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Sure,

In Integromat (and I am sure Zapier has similar functionality), a mailhook acts like a webhook, but instead of a url, it has a unique email address.

This guy explains them really well âžť How to use Integromat MAILHOOKS (With Examples) - YouTube

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super. thanks for the link - I get it now!

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Nice! Thank you, this was exactly what I needed.

Now, I can use Braintoss to send a note to the make.com (formerly Integromat) mailhook. Integromat concerts the email HTML to markdown, and saves it to dropbox. I have Hazel watching that Dropbox folder, and it moves the file to my iCloud drive.

A stupid amount of moving pieces, but in the end I get new files in my Obsidian Inbox folder.