Open an .eml file
Drop an .eml or .emlx: the message is shown with its header, body and attachments, in the right script, whatever its encoding. The file stays in this tab.
Or drop one or more .eml or .emlx files here. Nothing is uploaded: the files stay in this tab.
When to use it
.eml is the format in which Thunderbird, Gmail ("Download message"), Outlook on the web and most software save an email. It comes as an attachment to a forward, in an export, in a case file.
Double-clicked, it often launches software you do not use, or asks you to set up an account. Here, you just drop it.
What this tool does
- The header: sender, recipients, copies, date, subject, with accented names and non-Latin scripts decoded.
- Every part of the message: HTML, text, and both when the sender sent both.
- The character set declared by each part: UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252 and the others.
- Attachments, an .eml forwarded as an attachment, a winmail.dat: each one opens in turn.
- Apple Mail's .emlx, read like an .eml.
What it does not do: An encrypted message (S/MIME, PGP) is not decrypted, and a signature is not verified. An mbox mailbox, which holds thousands of messages one after another in a single file, is not read here.
What it reads
- .eml, the standard message format (MIME).
- Apple Mail's .emlx.
- A message forwarded as an attachment (
message/rfc822).
No file is uploaded: the message is read by your browser, in this tab, and the page is not allowed to open a connection to any other site.
Frequently asked questions
- What program opens an .eml file?
- Your browser, on this page: drop the file and it is shown. No email account to set up.
- Why do accents show as garbled characters elsewhere?
- Each part of a message declares its character set, and software that ignores the declaration shows "é" instead of "é". Here, the message is decoded according to what each part declares.
- What about an .emlx file?
- It is Apple Mail's format: an .eml preceded by its length and followed by a few properties. Drop it here like an .eml.
Other tools
- Open a .msg file : An email saved from Outlook, read without Outlook: header, body, attachments.
- Open a winmail.dat : The unreadable attachment Outlook sends: the real files inside come out.
- Open a PST file : A whole Outlook mailbox (.pst, .ost): its folders, its messages, search and filters.
- Open an mbox mailbox : An mbox mailbox (Gmail via Google Takeout, Thunderbird): labels, search, attachments.
- Read a WhatsApp chat : An exported WhatsApp chat, as bubbles, with its media, and an extract that says what it leaves out.