Saving an email as a PDF, and what stays behind in the mailbox
A receipt, a booking confirmation or an exchange you may need to show someone later is worth keeping outside the mailbox, as a file that opens anywhere. This tool takes the message file a mail app saves and sets it as clean pages: who sent it, to whom and when, then the message.
Updated
Which tool you need
An email in Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Gmail or Outlook on the web
Save or download the message as an .eml file from the app's message menu, then choose that file here.
An Outlook desktop message saved as .msg
That is Outlook's own format and it is refused here. Save the same message again as an .eml file, which this tool reads.
A whole thread, or several separate emails, that belong in one PDF
Make a PDF from each message, then put them together in date order with Merge PDF.
A message copied out as plain text
Text to PDF sets pasted or saved .txt text as pages, keeping its lines as they were.
Why some pictures are missing on purpose
Newsletters and marketing mail often load their pictures from the sender's server when the message is opened, and the request for a picture is how the sender learns you looked. This tool never makes that request. Pictures that travel inside the message, such as a logo sent with it or a photo pasted into the reply, are drawn where they belong.
So a personal email usually comes out complete, while a heavily designed one may show gaps where its banners were. The page tells you how many pictures were left out, so you know whether anything that matters is missing.
What the pages look like
The subject heads the first page, followed by the sender, the recipients, anyone copied and the date. The message follows, read from its formatted version when it has one, so headings, emphasis, lists and links survive; most email is laid out with tables, and those are read as the paragraphs and pictures they hold rather than drawn as a grid.
The message's own fonts, colors and columns are not used: it is set in this site's typefaces, Sans or Monospaced, on an A4, Letter or Legal page with the margins you choose. That makes a plain, consistent record rather than a picture of how the mail app showed it.
Attachments and forwarded mail
At the end the PDF lists every attachment with its name and size, and attached pictures are drawn after the list. A PDF, spreadsheet or document that came attached stays a separate file: open it from the mail app or the saved .eml on its own. A forwarded email that came as an attachment is listed by its subject.
What to know before you start
- Outlook .msg files are not read; only .eml.
- Nothing linked from the web is fetched, pictures included.
- Attachments are named in the PDF, not converted into it.
- One message at a time, from a file of up to 64 MB.