How to use the EML viewer
- Pick the saved email with the “Choose file” button at the top of this page, or drop the .eml onto the box around it.
- Read the email. The subject, sender, recipients and date are at the top and the message is below. Images hosted on the internet stay blocked until you press “Load images”.
- Download any attachment on its own, or press “Save as PDF” to open your browser’s print dialog and keep a copy of the message.
The file is read by JavaScript running in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and there is no account or install.
What is an EML file?
An EML file is one email saved to disk. Inside is plain text in the standard internet message format (MIME): first the headers such as From, To, Subject and Date, then the message, then any attachments encoded as text. Because it follows the email standards and not one company’s design, many programs can create and read it.
You usually end up with one when someone drags a message out of a mail program, downloads a message from webmail, or forwards an email as an attachment.
If you open an .eml file in a text editor you see the raw source: readable headers followed by long blocks of encoded characters. That is normal and does not mean the file is damaged. A viewer decodes those blocks back into the message and its attachments.
How do I open an EML file on Windows, Mac or a phone?
You can open an EML file in most desktop mail programs, or on this page from any device with a modern browser.
Windows
Outlook and Thunderbird both open .eml files. If double-clicking does nothing or starts the wrong program, right-click the file, choose “Open with” and pick your mail program. If no mail program is installed or set up, drop the file into the viewer above instead.
Mac
Apple Mail opens .eml files. Double-click the file, or drag it onto the Mail icon in the Dock. The message normally opens in its own window and is not added to your inbox.
iPhone and Android
Phones are less predictable. A mail app will often display an .eml that arrives as an attachment, but a file saved to your phone’s storage may have no app willing to open it. In that case this page works in the phone’s browser too: “Choose file” opens the phone’s file picker, where you can find the saved email.
Can I open an EML file in Gmail?
Partly: Gmail can display an .eml file that arrives as an attachment, but it has no option to import one from your computer. Click the attachment inside a message and Gmail shows the attached email in a separate window.
If the file is already on your disk, the only route through Gmail is to email it to yourself as an attachment first. The viewer above skips that step and does not put a copy of the message in your mailbox.
To keep a copy that anyone can read without a mail program, use the EML to PDF converter. If your file ends in .msg and not .eml, it came from Outlook and needs the MSG viewer.