Convert a .msg file to .eml

Why convert at all

A .msg file is an email in Microsoft Outlook’s own format. Outlook on Windows reads it, and almost nothing else does: Apple Mail, Thunderbird, phone mail apps and most archiving systems can’t. An .eml file holds the same email in the standard internet format, the one mail servers actually send, so it opens in nearly every email program and can be filed, imported or forwarded on without anyone needing Outlook. Converting is the way to keep an email that arrived as a .msg in the program you actually use.

Convert one, free

1. Drop the .msg file on this page, or press Choose a file.
2. Check it’s the email you expected.
3. Press Save as .eml above the email. The .eml file is made in your browser and saved to your device, named after the subject.

There’s no sign-up and no limit on how many you convert one at a time. The file isn’t uploaded anywhere, so it’s fine for contracts, payslips and anything else private.

What carries over

• The subject, sender, recipients, copies and date.
• The formatted message and its plain-text version, with pictures in the body kept in place.
• Every attachment, byte for byte.
• Emails attached inside the email (Outlook’s “forward as attachment”) become attached .eml files of their own, so they open too.
• winmail.dat packages are unpacked: the files inside become ordinary attachments and the winmail.dat itself is left out.

Some things only mean something inside Outlook and aren’t part of an .eml: categories, flags, follow-up reminders, voting buttons and whether you’d read it. Meeting requests come across as their text. If an item in the original can’t be carried over, for example an embedded object with nothing in it, the .eml says so at the end of the message rather than dropping it silently.

winmail.dat to .eml

If you were sent an email whose attachment is a winmail.dat, open that email (.eml) or the winmail.dat itself here and press Save as .eml. You get a clean copy with the real attachments, which you can keep or forward to people who would otherwise get the same useless winmail.dat.

Opening the .eml

• Mac: double-click it and it opens in Apple Mail.
• Thunderbird: double-click it, or use File, Open, Saved Message. To keep it with your other mail, drag the file onto a folder in Thunderbird.
• Outlook on Windows: it opens .eml files when Outlook is your default mail program.
• Anywhere else: this page opens .eml files too, on phones and Chromebooks as well.

Many files, or a whole mailbox

Converting one email at a time is free. The one-time unlock converts a whole folder of .msg, winmail.dat and .eml files in one go: you get one ZIP with a PDF and an .eml copy of every email, the attachments in folders and a summary spreadsheet. It also exports a whole .pst data file or an Outlook for Mac .olm archive to .eml files or .mbox mailboxes for Thunderbird and Apple Mail.

What can’t be converted

Emails encrypted with S/MIME, and messages with Microsoft’s rights protection (“Do not forward”), can only be read by the intended recipient in Outlook. The page tells you when a file is one of those, and doesn’t try to get around it.