Open EML File

How to save an email as an EML file from Gmail?

Did you know that you can export individual messages as EML files (as a backup or to open them in email programs) from Gmail?

This task will be useful for the following:

• You need a copy of an important email offline.
• Forward a message as an attachment to Gmail on the web.
• Move only one email from a Gmail account to your desktop email program without configuring IMAP access or forwarding it online.
• Analyze the encoding of the mail to detect possible malware or viruses.

While there is no “Save as…” command in Gmail for an email or a conversation, it is still possible to save an email as EML file.

These are the steps to save an individual email message as an EML file in Gmail:

• Open the message in Gmail.
• In the upper right corner of the email view, you will find three dots that once clicked will open the menu. In the menu you will need to click 'Download message'
• The message will be downloaded automatically with the .EML file extension.

Now, if you want to see the source code of the messages, then follow these steps:

In the same three dots menu mentioned above, there is a 'Show original' option, clicking there will show a window similar to this one:

In the “original” view we can see a header section with following fields:

• The unique Message ID.
• The creation date and the transit time of the mail.
• The source email address.
• The destination email address.
• The subject of the mail.
• The sender's IP address.
• The DKIM anti spoofing of mail.

After the header you can see the full body code of the mail, which you can copy to the clipboard and paste it into a notepad file. In that code you will find absolutely all the information related to the mail, including the attached files.

Once the code is copied and pasted into a notepad file, you can save it with the extension .EML as shown in the following image:

EML file could be opened in any email client compatible with this extension, as we can see below: