.eml files are plain text files. Please explain what you're trying to achieve in the first place.

.eml files are text files containing, for example, representations of jpeg and other images. Text files remove all non-text information from the generated file.

Although completely accurate that the .eml files contain only text information it does not cover the case where non-textual information is donverted to a text format.

What I would like to do is to have TBird allow me to input a .eml file and then store it as a .txt file. The 'Store As' functionality removes non-textual information from the email.

thanks art

Remove any attachments from the message prior to saving it in eml format.

My issue is not how to store emails but how to convert emails from .eml to .txt. Your solution may well work to store a virgin copy of an email. But you solution does not work for Files->Open->Saved Message since there is no way to save the email in any other than in an .eml format. I guess you are suggesting that I Open a saved message, remove all the images, save it and then rename it. This is tedious. If this is the only way then I guess I will have to do it, but, perhaps this might be put on a wishlist for a future version of ThunderBird.

thanks art

I tried and found that right-clicking in the open eml-file gives you access to save as plain text.

EDIT I have ImportExportTools as add-on. BUT what I didn't check was if it realy made a txt-file. I coudn't find any. SORRY