Open an email file in your browser
Drop an .eml file: sender, subject, body and attachments, without Outlook or Thunderbird. No remote resource is loaded, nothing is stored.
How it works
- Drop your .eml file — 15 MB maximum. It is read in memory during the request, never written to disk.
- The message is decoded — headers, nested MIME parts, base64, quoted-printable, legacy character sets: everything is brought back to readable text.
- Read it safely — the text body is shown as is, the HTML body is rebuilt then isolated, and attachments are listed with their name, type and size.
Use cases
- Opening an email received as an attachment — a correspondent forwards you a message as an .eml file and your webmail refuses to display it.
- Examining a suspicious message without risk — no script can run, no remote image tells the sender you opened it, no attachment can be opened by accident.
- Reading an archive without a mail client — on a machine where Outlook or Thunderbird are not installed, or from a phone.
- Checking the contents of an export — after a backup or a conversion, making sure a message really is complete and readable.
- Seeing what a message actually weighs — the attachment list and their sizes often explain a full mailbox on their own.
What this tool doesn't do
- Outlook's .msg format is not read yet. It is a proprietary Microsoft container, very different from a raw email. The file is recognised and we explain how to get an equivalent .eml in two clicks from Outlook.
- Attachments are not downloadable: serving them would mean keeping the file after the response, which we do not want to do.
- Remote images are never loaded, including the legitimate images of a newsletter: we only tell you how many were blocked.
- The HTML shown is deliberately impoverished — no external stylesheet, no remote font, no nested frame. A very graphic email will look plainer here than elsewhere: that is the price of isolation.
- Cryptographic signatures (S/MIME, PGP) are neither decrypted nor verified; an encrypted message will appear as an unreadable block.
Frequently asked questions
What is an .eml file? +
It is an email message saved exactly as it travelled: headers, message body and attachments in a single text file, in the RFC 822 format. Every mail client can produce one, and it is the standard exchange format for a single email.
Is the file I drop kept on your servers? +
No. The file is read in memory during the request to produce the display, then it disappears with the response. It is never copied to storage, never saved to a database, and there is no address that would let it be downloaded again — because there is nothing left to download.
Why aren't the message's images shown? +
Because no remote resource is loaded. Loading an email's image amounts to telling the sender that you opened it, IP address included: that is exactly how tracking pixels work. We would rather tell you how many images were blocked than load them on your behalf.
Is it risky to open a suspicious email here? +
That is precisely the intended use. The text body is displayed escaped, so never interpreted. The HTML body, if there is one, is rebuilt from an allowlist of tags and attributes — no script, no event handler, no remote resource survives — then displayed in an isolated frame that forbids code execution. Attachments are listed but never served: there is nothing to open by accident.
Can I download the attachments? +
Not here. The viewer lists the name, type and size of each attachment without serving its content: that is what makes it possible to guarantee nothing is kept after the response. To pull the attachments out of a whole mailbox, use the attachment extractor.
What about Outlook .msg files? +
A .msg dropped here is recognised as such, but that proprietary format (a Microsoft OLE container) is not read yet: we then explain how to get an .eml in two clicks from Outlook, either via "Save as" choosing "Message text", or by dragging the message onto a folder on your desktop.
Is there a size limit? +
The file is read up to 15 MB, which covers the vast majority of messages, attachments included. Beyond that the message is displayed partially and you are told so. An anti-abuse rate limit applies per IP address, the same for everyone.