EMLX viewer

Open Apple Mail's own message files

Apple Mail doesn't keep your mail in one big mailbox file. It stores every message as a separate .emlx file in the Library/Mail folder of your home directory, in a versioned folder such as V10. You'll usually run into these files when restoring from a Time Machine backup, moving to a new computer, recovering mail from an old Mac's drive, or receiving a folder of messages from a Mac user.

Outside Apple Mail, nothing opens them by default. InboxVue reads EMLX files in your browser on any operating system, and you can drop a whole folder to see the messages as one sortable, searchable list.

How EMLX differs from EML

An EMLX file has three parts:

1. A number on the first line, giving the size of the message in bytes.
2. The message itself, a normal internet email in the same format as an .eml file.
3. An Apple property list (XML) with Mail's metadata: flags, read and flagged status, and the date Mail received it.

InboxVue reads the message part with the same engine as the EML viewer and uses the metadata where it helps, such as showing flagged messages. When you export to EML, only the standard message is saved, so the result opens anywhere. You can also export to PDF, just like with EML to PDF.

Finding EMLX files in a Mac backup

In a backup or a copied home folder, go to Library/Mail/. You'll see a version folder (for example V10), then folders for each account, then .mbox folders for each mailbox. Inside those, messages live in nested Data/.../Messages folders. You don't need to dig down that far: drop a whole account or mailbox folder and InboxVue finds every .emlx file in it.

On a working Mac, the Library folder is hidden. In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder and type ~/Library/Mail. If you want an archive of a mailbox rather than loose files, exporting it from Apple Mail as an MBOX is often simpler; see the MBOX viewer for Mac.

Troubleshooting

"Attachments are stored separately." The file is a .partial.emlx. Look for an Attachments folder next to the Messages folder; it holds folders named after the message number. Drop those files to open them.

Folders named like .mbox contain no single file. In Apple Mail's library, .mbox folders hold EMLX files, not one MBOX file. Drop the folder as it is.

The date looks wrong. The viewer shows the date from the email's headers. Apple's metadata records when Mail received it, which can differ for imported messages.

Lots of tiny files fail to open. Make sure you dropped .emlx files, not Mail's index files such as Envelope Index, which are databases rather than messages.

Ways to open EMLX files

For general advice on email files, see how to open an EML file.