How do I view an Outlook .msg file?

Question

I need to view a .msg file. It is an email from Microsoft Outlook. How can I do this in Ubuntu?

similar question: https://askubuntu.com/questions/282691/how-to-convert-msg-file-outlook-email-msg-into-eml — DJCrashdummy, Oct 14 '16 at 12:19
At least with Thunderbird(45.8.0)->Open File it displays somewhat readable. — math, Oct 17 '17 at 08:53
check this Answer for this issue: https://superuser.com/a/1472788/880537 — Akhil Surapuram, Aug 19 '19 at 08:15
If you have access to outlook web access and only want to look at the message text, you could create a draft email message, attach the .msg file to it, then go to Drafts, open the mail from there by clicking on the attached message. It should show the contents of the mail, and also the attachments it has, but unfortunately the attachments of this message cannot be downloaded. (The described approach was not my idea, I found it in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAqb8fQfIQI .) — anre, Apr 10 '24 at 10:47

score 43 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 02 '14 at 18:45

43

Building on Martin Owens answer, this is the quick solution:

wget http://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/msgconvert.pl
sudo apt-get install libemail-outlook-message-perl libemail-localdelivery-perl libemail-sender-perl
perl msgconvert.pl YourMessage.msg

edited Dec 02 '14 at 18:45

Community

1

answered Oct 22 '13 at 08:40

Will Sheppard

704

4

For Ubuntu 14.04 I also needed this package: libemail-sender-perl – bmaupin Nov 13 '14 at 14:08

score 36 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 05 '11 at 04:38

36

Looks like the best thing to do is to convert them to an eml file using this script:

http://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/

It's not pretty, it's not gui based, but it'll work.

answered Feb 05 '11 at 04:38

Martin Owens -doctormo-

20,275

1

After installing the script as indicated (cpan -i Email::Outlook::Message) found a quick way to call it: creating a "Nautilus Script" with: #!/bin/bash for arg do msgconvert "$arg" done – Stefano Sep 30 '14 at 07:28
5

I can install this on my computer with sudo apt install libemail-outlook-message-perl and then just msgconvert xyz.msg and I get a xyz.eml file – Jayen Feb 20 '19 at 10:56
Today the latest version is v0.920 and it still turns HTML messages into plain text messages – basin Jun 28 '21 at 20:02

score 23 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 21 '16 at 21:02

I am on Ubuntu 15.10 and matijs'es msgconvert script seems to be available in the repos now. after running:

sudo apt-get install libemail-outlook-message-perl libemail-localdelivery-perl libemail-sender-perl

I can now now run

msgconvert *.msg

to convert the messages entirely with tools from the repos.

score 21 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 10 '18 at 13:11

21

Open it with MsgViewer http://sourceforge.net/projects/msgviewer/

wget -O MSGViewer.zip http://sourceforge.net/projects/msgviewer/files/latest/download
unzip MSGViewer.zip
cd MSGViewer-1.9
java -jar MSGViewer.jar

now, just drag'n'drop the msg file to the program window to have its contents displayed.

edited Aug 10 '18 at 13:11

Stuart Axon

380

answered Jul 14 '15 at 13:14

Kamil Roman

321
2
3

MSGViewer is a nice program, but I found that the viewer wouldn't open an attached .PDF file within the .MSG file. It appeared to change the filename to something that it couldn't find. – Mr Ed Apr 25 '16 at 07:21
1

This works nicely. However I have some problems with the encoding of non ASCI mails (in my case Greek). Do you happen to know if there is any setting for this. – Bruni Jun 22 '16 at 16:22
This works with Java 8. Java 11, that I tried with first, removed the java activation framework this uses and so no longer works without some extra effort to use the replacement https://github.com/eclipse-ee4j/jaf – jwd630 Oct 16 '18 at 01:49
Opening attached files (e.g. PDF files) worked fine for me after changing the OpenCommand from kde-open to xdg-open (MSGViewer setting). – nspo Sep 20 '19 at 14:43

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 25 '15 at 12:20

4

I found after install msgconvert that msgconvert wasn't installed when I ran the command. Rather than faff about trying to debug it, I did this. Done in less than a minute. http://www.zamzar.com/convert/msg-to-pdf/

answered Mar 25 '15 at 12:20

dez93_2000

1,251

4

it doesnt handle attachments, so it's pretty fail imo – Northstrider Oct 03 '15 at 07:58
I converted from .MSG to .EML, and the attachments come through correctly. The .EML files was openable with Thunderbird. – Mr Ed Apr 25 '16 at 07:22

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 19 '18 at 12:40

You can use ruby-msg ruby gem for that purposes. So:

Install ruby and rubygems:
```
# apt-get install rubygems gem
```
Install the gem:
```
# gem install ruby-msg
```

Then use the "mapitool" utility:

$ mapitool -i test.msg

In some cases you can sporadically get the exception:

/usr/local/share/gems/gems/ruby-msg-1.5.2/lib/mapi/mime.rb:109:in `join': incompatible character encodings: UTF-8 and ASCII-8BIT (Encoding::CompatibilityError)

So just fix the following file lib/mapi/mime.rb with the following regexp:

sed 's/part.to_s(opts)/part.to_s(opts).encode("UTF-8", :invalid=>:replace, :undef => :replace, :replace => "")/' -i /usr/local/share/gems/gems/ruby-msg-1.5.2/lib/mapi/mime.rb

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 06 '21 at 09:28

0

You can try using an online viewer such as:

https://msgeml.com

It displays the .msg message, provides download links for the attachments, shows the headers, and converts the file to .eml.

answered Jan 06 '21 at 09:28

EliasP

51
1
6

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 19 '15 at 13:59

0

With SeaMonkey program, Link please see below: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

answered Mar 19 '15 at 13:59

Davidgh

11

1

Where do you see that seamonkey is able to view those files? Add a detailed description please. – guntbert Mar 19 '15 at 14:10
Please install this program, after that from "File" menu choose "open file..." and choose your .msg file. – Davidgh Mar 19 '15 at 14:16

How do I view an Outlook .msg file?

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