Mailunwrap

Guide

Open a .msg file on iPhone or iPad

The Mail app can’t show Outlook .msg files or winmail.dat attachments. Safari can, with nothing to install.

Drop the email file here

.msg · winmail.dat · .eml · .mbox · .pst · .olm

Opened in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Sample email Open your own file above. This one is made up.

Your kitchen proposal and floor plan

What you’re seeing

When an Outlook user sends you an email file, your iPhone shows it as an attachment called something like Message.msg or winmail.dat, and tapping it shows a blank page or a grey icon. The Mail app, Files and Quick Look can’t read either format. The content is all there; it’s just packed in Microsoft’s format.

How to open it in Safari

  1. In Mail, touch and hold the attachment, then choose Save to Files. Put it in On My iPhone or iCloud Drive.
  2. Open this page in Safari and tap Choose a file.
  3. Tap Browse if needed, find the file you saved and tap it.
  4. The email opens on the page. Tap Save next to an attachment to save it back to Files, or open it from there.

Everything happens on your phone. The page doesn’t upload the file, and it doesn’t need an account or an app.

winmail.dat on iPhone

A winmail.dat attachment usually means the sender’s Outlook wrapped the real attachments (a PDF, a photo, a spreadsheet) in its own package. Open the winmail.dat here and those files appear in the attachment list, ready to save. The message text is often inside too, and it’s shown on the page.

It isn’t something wrong with your phone: it happens because of a setting on the sender’s side. Why winmail.dat happens and how the sender can stop it.

Saving an attachment

When you tap Save, Safari asks whether to download the file. Downloads go to the Downloads folder in Files (or wherever you’ve set Safari to save them). From there you can open a PDF in Books or Files, add a photo to Photos with the Share button, or send the file on.

If it doesn’t work

  • If the file picker greys the file out, choose Browse and look in the folder you saved it to; files still inside the Mail app can’t be picked until you save them.
  • If the page says the email is encrypted or protected, it was sent with S/MIME encryption or Microsoft rights protection. Only the recipient’s Outlook can open those.
  • Very large mailbox files (.mbox) can be too big for a phone’s memory. A computer will cope better.

One-time unlock

Batch, PDF and whole mailboxes

Opening emails and saving their attachments is free, one file at a time, for as long as you like. For people who deal with a lot of email files, a single payment adds:

  • Batch to PDF. Choose many .msg, winmail.dat, .eml, .mbox or .pst files and get one ZIP: a PDF of every email, all the attachments in folders, and a summary spreadsheet. A file that can’t be read is listed with the reason; the rest still go in.
  • Save as PDF in one click, without the print dialog.
  • Whole mailboxes. Browse every message in an .mbox, a small .pst or an Outlook for Mac .olm archive, folder by folder, and search by subject, sender, recipient or folder (the first 10 are free).
  • Export whole archives. Turn an .olm (or a .pst) into .mbox files for Thunderbird and Apple Mail, .eml files or PDFs, with contacts as vCard and CSV and the calendar as .ics.
  • Save all attachments from an email as one ZIP.

No account and no subscription. Files still never leave your device.

£6once

Coming soon

It isn’t on sale yet, so there’s nothing to pay today. Opening files and saving attachments works now, free.