Email to PDF (EML, MSG)

About the Email to PDF (EML, MSG)

Choose a saved e-mail — an .eml file (Gmail, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook on the web) or an Outlook .msg file — and get a PDF of it: a header block with the subject, From, To, Cc, date and the list of attachments, then the message itself with its layout, colours, tables, links and the pictures it carries. PDF and picture attachments can be added as pages after the message, so the whole e-mail is in one file.

The e-mail is opened in your browser and never uploaded. Scripts in it never run, and pictures from the internet stay blocked unless you allow them, so opening a message here doesn’t contact the sender’s servers; tracking pixels that are marked as tiny or hidden are removed even then.

Common uses

• Keeping an e-mail with its attachments as one PDF for records, an audit or a case file.
• Opening an Outlook .msg file without Outlook.
• Sending an e-mail conversation to someone as a document they can read anywhere.
• Printing an e-mail without the mail app’s menus and buttons around it.

What the PDF contains

• Header block (can be turned off): subject, From, To, Cc, Bcc (only if the saved file has it), Reply-To when it differs from From, and the date and time in the sender’s time zone, as the message states it — for example “Saturday, 3 October 2026, 18:30 (UTC+05:30)”. When the message doesn’t give the sender’s zone, an exact time (as Outlook stores it) is shown in yours, and a time written without any zone is shown as written, marked “time zone not stated”. The header block is the tool’s own: the e-mail’s styles can’t change, hide or cover it.
• The message with its layout, text styles, colours, tables, borders and links (web and e-mail links stay clickable). Its text is real text: you can select, search and copy it. Page breaks are placed between lines of text, and pictures that fit on a page are not cut in half.
• Pictures carried in the e-mail (inline pictures and logos).
• The list of attachments with their sizes. PDF attachments can be added page by page after the message, and pictures (JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP) one per page, fitted to the page with their file name above. Other attachments can be saved one by one.

The PDF’s file name is the subject of the e-mail.

Pictures from the internet and tracking pixels

Many e-mails, newsletters especially, show pictures that are downloaded from the sender’s servers when the message is opened. Downloading them tells the sender that — and when, and from which internet address — you opened it, so they are blocked by default. Pictures marked as tiny (3 pixels or less) or hidden — the usual tracking pixels — are always removed. A tracker without such marks looks like any other picture until it has been downloaded, so only blocking pictures from the internet keeps every tracker out.

If you turn on Load pictures from the internet, they are shown in the preview and included when you print with the browser. They can’t be put into the downloaded PDF: browsers don’t let a web page read pictures that come from other websites. Background pictures set with CSS are not drawn in the downloaded PDF either; background colours are.

Create PDF, or the browser’s Save as PDF

Create PDF draws the e-mail with the Noto Sans font (and Inconsolata for code), which covers Latin — including Vietnamese — Greek and Cyrillic. The e-mail’s own fonts are replaced, but its layout is kept. Characters these fonts don’t have, such as emoji or Indian, Arabic and Chinese scripts, show as “?” — the result tells you when that happens.

Print or save with the browser uses your browser’s print engine instead: it keeps the e-mail’s own fonts and every script your device can display, and includes pictures from the internet if you allowed them. Choose “Save as PDF” as the printer; the page size and margins chosen here are already applied. Attachments are not added on this route.

Formats and standards

• .eml files are Internet messages as defined in RFC 5322, with MIME (RFC 2045–2049) for HTML bodies, pictures and attachments; encoded headers (RFC 2047) and character sets are decoded.
• .msg files are Outlook items in the compound-file format described in Microsoft’s [MS-OXMSG] specification. The HTML body is used when the file has one, or the HTML that Outlook keeps inside compressed RTF ([MS-OXRTFCP], [MS-OXRTFEX]); otherwise the plain-text body. The date comes from the message’s transport headers when it has them, which keeps the sender’s time zone.
• HTML is cleaned before it is shown: scripts, frames and embedded objects are removed, forms can’t send anything, and links open in a new tab.

Limitations

• Only one e-mail at a time. Mailbox files (.mbox, .pst, .ost) aren’t supported, and Outlook meeting requests, contacts or tasks saved as .msg show only their subject, people and text — not times, places or other fields.
• Pictures from the internet, CSS background pictures, videos and web fonts are not in the downloaded PDF (pictures from the internet can be included by printing with the browser).
• Encrypted e-mails (S/MIME or PGP) can’t be read: only their header and attachment list are shown.
• Password-protected or damaged PDF attachments, TIFF pictures and other file types can’t be added as pages; they stay in the attachment list.
• E-mails attached to the e-mail (forwarded as attachments) are listed but not converted. In .eml files they can be saved and converted separately; in .msg files they are only listed.
• Very wide newsletters are scaled down to fit the page width, as mail apps do on phones.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.