How to Extract Email Addresses from MSG and EML Files

What MSG and EML Files Are

MSG is Microsoft Outlook's native message format. Each .msg file contains a single email message, including its headers (From, To, CC, BCC), body text and attachments. MSG files are created when you save or drag an email from Outlook.

EML is a standard email format used by many email clients, including Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Windows Mail and some webmail export tools. Like MSG, each .eml file represents one message with headers and body.

Both formats contain email addresses in structured locations (header fields) and unstructured locations (body text), making them useful sources for extraction.

Extraction Steps

1. Open Email Extractor.
2. Select Text and files.
3. Upload your .msg or .eml files, or drag them into the upload area. Maximum 25 MB per file, 100 MB per batch.
4. Click Extract emails.
5. Review the results. Duplicates are removed using case-insensitive matching.
6. Copy individual addresses or download as TXT, CSV or CSV with sources.

You can upload multiple MSG and EML files together in one batch, or combine them with other supported file types.

Example

An email saved as project-update.eml contains:

From: yuki@example.com
To: priya@example.org, team@example.net
CC: manager@example.com

Hi team,

Please send your updates to yuki@example.com by Friday.
Contact ravi@example.org if you need the shared drive access.

After extraction, Email Extractor returns five unique addresses:

• yuki@example.com
• priya@example.org
• team@example.net
• manager@example.com
• ravi@example.org

The duplicate yuki@example.com from the body text is removed.

What Email Extractor Reads

Supported message headers. The From, To, CC and BCC fields contain structured email addresses. Email Extractor reads these fields and extracts the addresses from them.

Message body. The body text of the email is scanned for email address patterns. This catches addresses mentioned in the message content, email signatures, forwarded messages and quoted replies.

What Email Extractor Does Not Read

Attachment contents. Email Extractor reads the message headers and body, not the contents of file attachments. If a PDF, spreadsheet or document is attached to the email, the addresses inside that attachment are not extracted.

To extract from attachments:

1. Open the MSG or EML file in an email client.
2. Save the attachments to your computer.
3. Upload the attachment files separately to Email Extractor, using the appropriate format guide:
   • PDF attachments
   • Excel attachments
   • Word attachments

Obtaining MSG Files

In Microsoft Outlook:

• Single message: Open the email, go to File → Save As, choose "Outlook Message Format (*.msg)".
• Multiple messages: Select the emails in your inbox or folder, then drag them to a folder in File Explorer. Each message saves as a separate .msg file.
• From a PST archive: If your messages are in a PST archive file, export them as MSG files first. See extracting from Outlook PST archives.

Obtaining EML Files

In most email clients:

• Thunderbird: Right-click a message → Save As → choose .eml.
• Apple Mail: Drag messages from Mail to a folder in Finder.
• Gmail (via Google Takeout): Export your emails as an MBOX file, then convert to individual EML files. See MBOX extraction.
• Webmail: Some services allow downloading individual messages as .eml from a menu option.

Batch Processing Multiple Email Files

When processing a large number of saved emails:

1. Collect all MSG or EML files in a folder.
2. Select multiple files and upload them to Email Extractor in one batch (within the 100 MB limit).
3. Download results as CSV with sources to see which email file each address came from.

If you have more files than fit in one batch, process them in groups and merge the results afterwards.

Limitations

Attachments are not read. Only message headers and body text are scanned. Addresses inside attached files require separate extraction.

Encoding variations. Email messages use various character encodings (UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, etc.) and transfer encodings (base64, quoted-printable). Most common encodings are handled, but some unusual encoding combinations may result in missed or garbled addresses.

HTML email bodies. Many modern emails are formatted in HTML. The HTML source may contain addresses in mailto: links, hidden text or comment tags. Email Extractor scans the raw content, which means it may find addresses in HTML markup that are not visible in the rendered message.

Forwarded and quoted content. Forwarded messages and quoted replies contain additional headers and addresses from earlier messages in the chain. These addresses are extracted alongside the primary message's addresses. Review results if you only need addresses from the top-level message.

Troubleshooting

Addresses from email signatures appear in results

Email signatures often contain the sender's address, company addresses and sometimes addresses of colleagues. These are extracted because they appear in the body text. If you only need the header addresses (From, To, CC), filter the results or review which addresses came from signatures versus header fields.

MSG files from a shared mailbox

MSG files saved from shared or delegated mailboxes work the same as files from personal mailboxes. The From address reflects whoever sent the message, whether that is a personal address or a shared mailbox address.

No results from an EML file

• Confirm the file is a valid EML file by opening it in a text editor. You should see headers like From:, To:, Date: and Subject: near the top, followed by the message body.
• If the file content is encoded (base64-encoded body), the tool should decode it, but heavily corrupted files may not process correctly.
• Check the file extension. A file that is actually an MBOX containing multiple messages will not process correctly with a .eml extension. See the MBOX guide.

Related Guides

• Extract emails from MBOX and Gmail Takeout. for converting MBOX to EML.
• Extract emails from Outlook PST archives. for exporting from PST files.
• Extract emails from multiple file types at once. for mixed batches.