Email File Viewer

What it's for

Open an email saved as a file, without a mail app. It shows the message, lists its attachments for saving, and checks its links, while keeping the sender from learning that you opened it: pictures from the web, which senders use to track opens, aren’t loaded.

For example, when someone forwards a suspicious message as an attachment, save the .eml and open it here to read it and see where its links really go, without opening it in your mail app.

How to use it

Choose an .eml file, or drop it on the page. Most mail apps can save or drag a message out as one.

You get the sender, recipients, date and subject; the message as it would look, with pictures that came inside the email shown and those from the web blocked; the plain text version; the attachments, each with a Save button; the links, with any whose text shows one site while the link goes to another in red; and the headers, with a Copy button for pasting into the Email Header Analyser.

Example

Save this as test.eml (a made-up message) and open it:

From: Alice <alice@example.com>
To: bob@example.com
Subject: Your account
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

<p>Please sign in at <a href="https://login.example.net/">www.bank.example</a> today.</p>
<img src="https://track.example/open.gif">

The message line says 0 attachments, 1 link and 1 remote picture not loaded. The link’s text shows a different site from where it goes, so it’s in red, and the message line points to it.

Good to know

It doesn’t read Outlook’s own .msg format, nor mailbox files holding many messages (.mbox); it reads the first message only. The message is shown with scripts, forms and web content switched off, so some layouts look plainer than in a mail app, and links in it don’t open: copy them from the Links table if you trust them.

The link check only catches links whose text looks like a web address; a button saying “Sign in” that goes to the wrong site isn’t flagged, so read the Links table too. Attachments are saved as they are: don’t open one you don’t trust.