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Someone sent me a .msg file on Skype, and somehow I just can't open this in Ubuntu.

Is there any app in which I could open the .msg file?

ZygD
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Elitmiar
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  • This could be many things...what type is this file? There are several different programs using the msg extension. – Bobby Jan 22 '10 at 13:11

9 Answers9

125

This is an MS-Outlook format. There is a command line tool called MSGConvert (see www.matijs.net/software/msgconv) which converts .msg files into .eml. You can open those with Thunderbird or Evolution. On Ubuntu you should be able to install the tool using

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

from a command line. Use

msgconvert *.msg

to convert every file in a directory at once. MSGConvert will produce copies of your .msg-files with the suffix .msg.eml. Regardless, your friend should learn how to send content properly.

Georg Jung
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    Somehow msgconvert didn't appear in the path, but the following worked: perl -we 'use Email::Outlook::Message; print Email::Outlook::Message->new(shift)->to_email_mime->as_string' foo.msg >bar.eml – Dallaylaen Jan 28 '16 at 17:54
  • Just to note, on debian based systems the msgconvert script isn't in the package.

    You can get it from the repo however here: https://github.com/mvz/email-outlook-message-perl

     – PottyBert Mar 03 '16 at 13:58
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    Using the msgconvert tool from https://github.com/mvz/email-outlook-message-perl, the command line ./msgconvert file.msg produces nothing. You have to use ./msgconvert --outfile file.eml file.msg. – slowhand May 27 '16 at 15:53
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    If you already did apt-get install libemail-outlook-message-perl, you don't need to do anything more. That package already contains /usr/bin/msgconvert, at least on Debian 8 Jessie. – Axel Beckert Jan 04 '17 at 14:18
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    +1 for rational note at the end – Kostrahb Mar 24 '21 at 22:21
  • Best feasible solution, the rest is crap. – David Apr 07 '21 at 03:13
  • I just get a base64 string that still needs decoding. – khatchad Feb 07 '23 at 20:37
  • @RaffiKhatchadourian mixed in with the base 64 stuff should be a clear area where the message is decoded in plain text. You might need to scroll up to see it. Or pipe the output into 'more' (or less) so that you can paginate your way down to where the email text is revealed. – the digitalmouse Feb 17 '23 at 11:52
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    Worked perfectly on Ubuntu 22.04. I wonder what is in .msg files. My .msg file is 150 KB, whereas the converted .eml file is only 34 KB. Furthermore, the smaller .eml file is plain text with an embedded ASCII HEX binary, whereas the .msg file is pure binary. Usually, binary files are more efficient than ASCII text files, not less. – Gabriel Staples Sep 12 '23 at 00:28
  • Worked great. The eml file could be viewed and I could display the source as text as I needed. – Markus Zeller Oct 02 '23 at 08:23
  • Doesn't seem to work with slightly broken files. – DustWolf Nov 21 '23 at 10:27
53

Use Microsoft one drive to open .msg files online via browser:

Sign in to your Microsoft onedrive account and upload the .msg file. After upload, you can click on it to view the file contents.

The advantage over other answers is you won't be sharing your file with third party file converters.

Note: This method is Non-OS specific and can be applied in any OS.

bfontaine
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Akhil Surapuram
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  • I wish I could edit the message also. – Jaakko Oct 02 '19 at 12:44
  • @Jaakko .msg files are email conversation thread. I coundn't find any sense of editing it. I think you can copy text content for forwarding mail purposes – Akhil Surapuram Oct 02 '19 at 16:38
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    despite that fact this is not a solution for the problem, in some particular cases your suggestion works very good! – radistao Feb 14 '20 at 12:39
  • @radistao thanks for the compliment. I say you don't have to convert the file to open .msg you just need to use Microsoft tools. for ubuntu, it's only in web and an electron version i.e nothing but the web.

    & yeah it definietly solves the problem of viewing .msg and therefore it can be treated as solution :P

     – Akhil Surapuram Feb 15 '20 at 06:05
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    After opening a .msg file on the OneDrive (using current Google Chrome) I can read the message body but I don't see a way to open attachments contained in the message and listed on the Attachments line. – rpr May 28 '20 at 11:32
  • Does it contain any attachments? are you able to view attachments in outlook on windows? – Akhil Surapuram May 29 '20 at 11:16
  • The disadvantage of this method is that you will be sharing the email with Microsoft. – neuhaus May 26 '21 at 10:45
  • LOL @neuhaus Microsoft owns outlook. They already have your entire outlook inbox, not just that email with you are trying to read by drive upload. – Akhil Surapuram May 26 '21 at 14:35
  • @AkhilSurapuram no they do not have your email if you use Outlook on your own Exchange server. – neuhaus May 29 '21 at 12:18
17

It's not perfect but you can import .msg file with Mozilla Thunderbird (it works with on 52.1.1 on my Linux Mint). I had some encoding error but you can globally read the content.

In Thunderbird you click on File > Open > Saved message and select your .msg file.

alexandre-rousseau
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    For my case, with this method, the file is totally unreadable. – Pierre-Olivier Vares Mar 11 '19 at 13:14
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    This kind of works. I can see a plain text message at the top with a lot of issues under it but I think it has got the text content of the email right. – Qwertie Apr 01 '19 at 00:10
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    There is no encoding error it simply than the encoding of the Outlook file (*.msg) is ANSI. I have the following in my .bash_profile : 
    function msgread() {
    msgconvert --outfile - "$1" | iconv -f ms-ansi -t utf-8  | less
}
    – Stéphane Jan 24 '20 at 15:12
  • Doesn't seem to work. Most likely cause: Windows uses UTF16, while Linux uses UTF8. – Michał Leon Aug 16 '21 at 10:46
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    Worked great for a couple of old Outlook messages I had failed to convert over. The messages were text only. Thanks! – Organic Marble Mar 08 '23 at 17:32
16

Another free and cross-platform tool for extracting the contents of an Outlook msg file from the command line is msg-extractor.

pip install extract-msg
extract_msg file.msg

Please note that while package name uses hyphen, command name uses underscore.

https://pypi.org/project/extract-msg/

MF.OX
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pooryorick
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7

I ran across such a file as well (provided to me by a colleague who saved an email message in Microsoft Outlook). file(1) identifies the .msg file like so:

foo.msg: Composite Document File V2 Document

Georg Jung's answer regarding Matijs van Zuijlen's perl-based msgconvert(1) utility steered me in the right direction. Although my system does not at the time of this writing have the msgconvert utility packaged, the install instructions on Matijs' web page indicate using cpan as one way to install it:

cpan -i Email::Outlook::Message

The cpan URL is http://search.cpan.org/dist/Email-Outlook-Message/

Juan
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7

Try this link: https://www.coolutils.com/online/Mail-Converter/

I came to this post searching for an answer, found the above link which did the job for me. Hence wanted to share here.

If you are concerned about privacy, you can buy their desktop version and convert it.

bragboy
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    @VirtualDXS - Life is harsh, isn't it ? :) – bragboy May 10 '16 at 20:28
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    I also downvote this "solution", because it violates privacy. .msg files sometimes contain mail threads, which must be kept confidential. – slowhand May 27 '16 at 15:29
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    I don't get where the tool violates privacy. It's just a wrong statement. It's the same saying Winrar violates privacy because sometimes .rar files contain files which may be confidential. Or an SQLite client violates privacy because you can read Skype conversations from .db file. – Andre Figueiredo Oct 04 '17 at 18:45
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    @AndreFigueiredo: It’s the difference between an online tool and a local program.  When you process data with WinRAR or any other program on your computer, the data stay on your computer (unless it’s infected with spyware). But with this “coolutils” solution, you upload your file to their website and then download the result.  Do they immediately delete your data off their servers?  Are their personnel allowed to look at your data?  Do they sell your data to other people? Once you give it to them, it’s out of your control. – Scott - Слава Україні Nov 09 '17 at 23:51
  • People should convert .msg files to smth like pdf before sending to not get poeple such problems opening. Most computers can open pdf without installing anything additionaly or sending to webservice like this. – Darius.V May 05 '21 at 12:56
4

You can also proceed like this:

strings foo.msg |html2text
Stéphane
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4

If you're on Windows, Mac, or another Linux than Ubuntu, or you don't want to install random packages on your system, I'd recommend building on Georg Jung's answer by using this docker container:

docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/mails --user $UID: lequoctuan/msgconvert my-file.msg

# takes a minute ...

cat my-file.eml
cfstras
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4

I've had luck with the MsgViewer application in Ubuntu, but it requires Java to work. The other option is to use an online viewer/converter, such as MsgEml.com.

EliasP
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