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EML & MSG Viewer
An EML viewer opens a saved email file — the .eml format every mail client exports — and shows it as a readable message instead of a wall of MIME. Drop the file here to read the body, inspect the headers, list the attachments and print it to PDF. Free, no install, and the file is read locally and never uploaded.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded, logged or stored.
Drop a .eml or .msg file here, or
Read locally with the File API. Nothing is uploaded — and an .eml holds the entire message.
No message open yet. Drop a file above and it renders immediately — no install, no account.
- Drag a .eml file in and read it immediately — no install, no account
- Decodes base64 and quoted-printable bodies, and UTF-8 subjects
- Plain-text and HTML views, with the HTML rendered safely as text
- Attachment list with real decoded sizes
- Full header table for the same message, no second tool needed
- Print to PDF with your browser — the honest .eml-to-PDF route
How to use it
Four steps, about thirty seconds
- 01
Get the .eml file
Most clients export one by dragging a message to your desktop, or File → Save As. Gmail's Show original page has a Download Original button.
- 02
Drop it in
The file is read locally with the File API. There is no upload, no progress bar and no size tier.
- 03
Read, or inspect
Switch between the message view, the raw source and the full header table.
- 04
Print to PDF
Use your browser's print dialogue and choose Save as PDF. That is genuinely how every honest .eml-to-PDF converter works.
The format
What is actually inside a .eml file
A .eml is not a document format. It is one email saved exactly as it travelled: a block of headers, a blank line, then a MIME tree. Open one in a text editor and you can read most of it — the parts that look like line noise are just base64.
That is why every mail client can open one, and why it is the right format for archiving a message or handing it to a lawyer. It is also why an .eml is sensitive: it contains the complete message, every recipient, every header and every attachment, which is the reason this viewer reads the file in your browser and never uploads it.
EML vs MSG
Two formats, and only one of them is a standard
People arrive at this page with both, so here is the honest comparison rather than the one that would make this tool look better than it is.
| Aspect | .eml | .msg |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | MIME — the RFC 5322 wire format, as plain text | Microsoft's proprietary Compound File Binary format |
| Who writes it | Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Gmail, essentially everything | Outlook on Windows, and software built around it |
| Opens in a browser | Yes — that's what this tool does | Partially: readable text can be extracted, formatting cannot |
| Holds Outlook-only data | No | Yes — categories, flags, voting buttons, Exchange properties |
| Best for archiving | Yes. It will still open in twenty years. | Only inside a Microsoft world |
| If you have one and no Outlook | Drop it above | Ask the sender to resend as .eml, or open it once in Outlook and save it as .eml |
EML to PDF
Converting an EML to PDF, without a converter
Open the file here and print it with your browser, choosing “Save as PDF” as the destination. That is the whole method, and it is the same method the paid converters use — they run a headless browser and print the page. There is no conversion engine to buy.
Two things worth knowing if the PDF is going somewhere that matters. First, print the Headers view as well as the message — for anything evidential, the routing and authentication data is the part with weight, and a printed body without headers proves very little. Second, a PDF made this way is a rendering, not the original: the .eml itself is the artefact to keep, and the PDF is the copy you hand around.
Safety
Why the HTML part is shown as text
An email you are inspecting is, by definition, one you are unsure about. Rendering its HTML inside this page would let it do three things: run script in the context of the page, load remote images that tell the sender exactly when and where you opened it, and display link text that differs from the link destination.
Showing the HTML as source removes all three. You can read the markup, see what the links actually point at, and spot the tracking pixel — which is usually a 1×1 image from a domain you do not recognise. For a suspicious message that is more useful than a faithful rendering anyway.
If you want the delivery story behind the same message, the header analyzer breaks out the hops and the SPF, DKIM and DMARC verdicts; the email extractor pulls out every address it contains.
Questions
Frequently asked
Short answers, including the ones where the honest answer is “this tool can’t do that”.
Drop it here. Otherwise, any desktop mail client opens one — Outlook, Apple Mail and Thunderbird all treat .eml as a native format — and on Windows you can rename it to .mht to open it in a browser, though that loses the headers.
Keep going
Related free tools
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Paste raw email headers to see the delivery route hop by hop, where the delay was, and whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC passed.
Open toolEmail Extractor
Paste text, HTML, CSV or a whole page and get a clean, deduplicated list of email addresses.
Open toolAttachment Limits
Check whether your file will send: attachment and message size limits for Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Proton and more, with the base64 overhead that makes a 24 MB file fail a 25 MB limit.
Open toolAI Emaily does the part this tool can’t: the reply.
A free tool cleans up a list or builds a link. AI Emaily reads the thread, drafts the answer in the voice you set, and waits for one click — across Gmail, Outlook, iCloud and any IMAP mailbox. You approve every send.
Email, finally worthy of your attention.
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