Sooner or later someone asks for a copy of an email: HR wants the message where your manager agreed to the time off, or the expense system wants a receipt that only ever arrived by email. A screenshot looks like a screenshot, and saving the email as a PDF from your mail app gives you something that looks like a printed web page.

Look Scanned can now open saved email files directly. Pick the file, check the message in the preview, and download a PDF that looks like the email was printed out and run through a scanner.

Which email files work?

File Where it comes from
.eml Gmail, Outlook for Mac, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and most other mail apps
.msg Outlook for Windows
.emlx Apple Mail's own storage, the files you find in a Mail backup

Each file holds one message. Whole-mailbox exports such as .pst, .olm or .mbox files don't open here. Save the individual messages you need instead.

Opening a .msg file without Outlook

If you've ever been sent a .msg file and couldn't open it on a Mac, or on a phone, this works for those too. You don't need Outlook installed. The message opens in the preview, and you can read it there even if you never generate the PDF.

How to save an email as a file

Mail apps hide this in slightly different places:

  • Gmail: open the message, click the three-dot menu next to Reply, then "Download message". You get an .eml file.
  • Outlook for Windows (new) and Outlook on the web: right-click the message, then "Save as" or "Download", and pick EML or MSG. In the desktop app you can also drag the message to your desktop.
  • Classic Outlook for Windows: open the message, then File → Save As, and choose "Outlook Message Format" to get a .msg file.
  • Outlook for Mac: open the message in its own window, then File → Save As. It saves as .eml.
  • Apple Mail: File → Save As…, with the format set to "Raw Message Source". Or just drag the message out of the list onto your desktop.
  • Thunderbird: right-click the message and choose "Save As…".

What ends up on the page

The email is laid out the way a mail client prints it:

  • The subject line at the top.
  • The From, To, Cc and Date lines.
  • The message body, with its formatting and the pictures embedded in it, such as a signature logo or a pasted screenshot.
  • At the end, a list of any attachments, each with its file name and size.

The message is placed on A4 pages, and a long thread continues onto the next page by itself. Outlook messages whose body is stored as RTF rather than HTML still open; the text comes through, though its bold and colours are dropped. Messages written in Chinese, Japanese or Korean with older Outlook versions display correctly.

How to turn an email into a scanned PDF

  1. Open Email to Scanned PDF and select your .eml, .emlx or .msg file.
  2. Check the preview. Make sure the addresses, the date and any quoted replies are all there.
  3. Adjust the scan effect. Keep blur and noise low if small text, such as a long address list, needs to stay readable.
  4. Generate the scanned PDF and download it.

Each page can also be saved as a JPG or PNG. Our guide to PDF, JPG and PNG explains when that's the better choice. If you have a folder of messages to get through, Bulk Scan, a Pro feature, takes several files at once.

The message stays on your device

The email file is read and laid out inside your browser. It isn't uploaded to a server, which matters more for email than for most documents, since one message can carry a whole conversation and everyone's addresses.

Images that the message would have loaded from the internet, including tracking pixels, are never requested, and neither are web fonts, so opening an email here doesn't tell the sender anything. Scripts inside the message don't run.

A few things to know first

  • Attachments are listed, not converted. You'll see the file name and size of each attachment, but not its contents. To scan an attached PDF or Word document, save it from your mail app and scan it on its own.
  • Remote images come out blank. Pictures that lived on a server rather than inside the message, which is how most newsletters and marketing emails are built, are left out. Images embedded in the message body, such as signature logos and pasted screenshots, are fine. A photo sent as an attachment is listed, not shown.
  • The PDF is made of images. Like a real scan, the text can't be selected or searched, and links can't be clicked. Keep the original .eml or .msg file in case anyone later needs to check who sent what and when.

Got a message you need on paper? Try it now.