A full email reader for .eml files
EML is the most common single-email file. When you choose Save as in Thunderbird, Download message in Gmail, Download as EML in Outlook on the web, or drag a message out of Apple Mail onto the desktop, you get an .eml file. It contains the whole email: the headers, the plain-text and HTML versions of the body, inline images and every attachment, all encoded as text.
Your computer doesn't always know what to do with it. On Windows, .eml is usually tied to new Outlook, which needs a Microsoft account to start. On a Mac it opens Apple Mail, which may not be set up. On a Chromebook or a work laptop with no mail client, there may be nothing that opens it at all. This viewer gives you a dependable way to read any EML file in a browser tab.
What you see
- The message as the sender intended. HTML emails render with their layout, fonts and colours inside an isolated frame. Plain-text emails are shown in a readable font with links made clickable.
- Clear headers. From, To, Cc, Reply-To and the date in your local time, with the original time zone on hover. The full header list and raw source are one click away.
- Attachments with previews. Images, PDFs, text and CSV files preview in place. Calendar invitations show as a card with the event time and location. Emails forwarded as attachments open as messages in their own right.
- Many files at once. Drop a folder of EML files and they appear as a mailbox, sorted by date, with search across senders, subjects and message text.
Safety while reading untrusted email
An EML file you've been sent could be a phishing message. The viewer protects you in three ways. Scripts in the email never run, because the body is displayed in a sandboxed frame with scripting disabled. Remote content is blocked until you ask for it. And every link shows its real destination before you leave the page. If you're checking whether an email is genuine, open View headers and look at the Authentication-Results and Received lines.
Troubleshooting
The text looks garbled. Older messages sometimes declare the wrong character set. Use ⋯ → Text encoding to pick another one; Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1, Shift_JIS and GB18030 cover most cases.
The body is empty but there's an attachment called winmail.dat. The sender used Outlook's rich-text format. Click the attachment to unpack it here, or read about it on the winmail.dat opener page and in our explainer, what is winmail.dat.
The file is called .emlx. That's Apple Mail's internal variant. It opens here too; see the EMLX viewer page for details.
It says the file is damaged. The file was probably cut short during download or copying. Headers and any complete parts are still shown; save the message from its source again to recover the rest.
Other ways to open an EML file
You can open EML files with Apple Mail, Thunderbird, classic Outlook, new Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the web. Our guide on how to open an EML file walks through each option on Windows, macOS, iPhone, Android and Chromebook. Desktop apps are a good choice if you already use one. A browser viewer is faster when you just need to read a file, when you're on a machine you don't control, or when you have a whole folder to look through. For a side-by-side look at a popular free Windows program, see CoolUtils Mail Viewer vs InboxVue.
When you need something other than a viewer
- Need a document to share or file? Convert EML to PDF.
- Want a web page you can archive or publish? Use EML to HTML.
- Got an Outlook file instead? Open it in the MSG viewer, or convert MSG to EML for use in other mail apps.
- Have a whole mailbox in one file? Use the MBOX viewer.