Converting MSG files to PDF
A .msg file is a single Outlook item saved in Microsoft’s own container
format. It holds the message and its attachments, plus Exchange properties
that have no equivalent in ordinary internet mail.
Being straightforward about it: EML Exhibit does not read .msg files
today. Native .msg support is on the roadmap. Until it ships, the
reliable route is to obtain the same messages as .eml from the mailbox they
live in, which takes minutes and is described below.
Why this page exists even though the answer is “not yet”
Search results for .msg conversion are dominated by pages that imply support
they do not have, and by converters that will happily take a folder of
privileged client mail and process it somewhere unstated. A page that says
plainly what a tool does and does not do is more useful than one that buries
the limitation on a pricing table.
So: .eml today, .msg on the roadmap. What follows is how to get from one to
the other without making a mess of the evidence.
The three routes, ranked
Re-export from the mailbox. If the messages still exist in a mailbox you
can reach, this is the clean answer. Outlook on the web downloads individual
messages as .eml from the same mail your desktop client is showing you as
.msg. Nothing is converted, so nothing is at risk of conversion loss.
Converting Outlook email covers the mechanics.
Convert the format with a local utility. Where the mailbox is gone and the
.msg files are all that survive, a format conversion is unavoidable. Prefer a
tool that runs on your own machine. The conversion is lossy in one direction
that matters: Exchange-specific properties with no internet-mail equivalent are
dropped, because there is nowhere to put them.
Forward the message to yourself. Fast, and the worst option for anything contested. You are producing a new message that contains the old one, dated today, sent by you. Use it to read something, not to produce it.
What gets lost, and whether it matters
Going from .msg to .eml discards Outlook item properties that are not part
of internet mail: Exchange sender identities, flag and follow-up state,
categories, voting responses. The message body, the header fields on the face
of the message, and the attachments all survive intact.
For most productions that loss is immaterial — the properties that were
dropped were never on the face of the message and were never going to appear on
an exhibit. It stops being immaterial when the case turns on Outlook-specific
behaviour, such as a disputed meeting response or a message that only ever
existed inside Exchange. In that situation, the .msg natives themselves are
what should be produced, and the PDF is a courtesy copy.
Keep the natives
Whichever route you take, the collected .msg files stay unmodified in your
file. A format conversion is a step in the handling of the evidence, and steps
in the handling are things you may have to describe later. Recording that the
conversion happened, when, and with what tool costs nothing at the time and is
awkward to reconstruct afterwards.
How to do it in EML Exhibit
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Go back to the mailbox rather than to the .msg files
If the .msg files were saved out of a live mailbox you still have access to, re-export from Outlook on the web instead. Individual messages download as .eml, and you skip the format problem entirely.
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Or open the .msg in Outlook and forward it to yourself
Opening a .msg in Outlook and forwarding it to an address you can reach from a web client gives you a message you can download as .eml. Note that this changes the message — the forwarded copy has new headers and a new date, so it is a working copy, not a produced original.
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Or convert the format with a dedicated utility
Several standalone utilities convert .msg to .eml in bulk. Check where the conversion actually happens before you use one — a browser-based converter that uploads privileged client mail to an unknown server is a confidentiality problem, not a format problem.
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Convert the resulting .eml batch here
Once you have .eml files, drop up to 100 in at once, choose PDF, set a matter prefix and sort by email date.
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Retain the original .msg files
Whatever route you take, keep the original .msg files unmodified. They are the natives you collected, and a format conversion in the middle of the chain is something you may have to account for.
When will .msg be supported directly?
It is on the roadmap and it is the most requested format, for the obvious reason that the legal market runs on Outlook. There is no committed date, and this page will say so plainly rather than imply otherwise.
What is actually different about .msg?
.eml is the plain-text internet message format defined by open
standards — headers, then MIME parts, readable in a text editor. .msg
is a structured binary container from the Microsoft compound-file family,
holding Outlook item properties as typed fields. It can represent things
internet mail cannot, such as an Exchange sender identity or a task item,
which is exactly why it needs its own parser. See
MSG file.
Does forwarding a .msg to myself damage it as evidence?
It creates a new message. The forwarded copy has its own headers, its own
date and a new Message-ID, and the original message is now nested
inside it. That is fine for a working copy and poor practice for a
produced original. If the message itself is contested, produce from the
collected native, not from a forward.
Are the free online .msg converters safe to use?
Ask where the file goes. A converter that runs in the browser and never transmits the file is a different proposition from one that uploads it to a server, and most do the latter without saying so. Uploading privileged client email to an unidentified third party is a confidentiality question before it is a technical one — see free online converters.