Viewing Email Headers

  • Updated on Dec 25, 2023
  • Published on Jul 16, 2021
  • 1 minute(s) read
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Every email that you send or receive consists of two parts: Header and body. A header provides details about the transmission of the mail including the network path between the sender and the receiver. Looking at an email's header, you can obtain information about its sender, recipient, date, subject, and the servers used in the transmission.

When you want to troubleshoot mail delivery problems or report a spam, you might need to view the header of your message to see how it got from the sender to the receiver mail server.

Almost all email clients hide the headers or displays them partially. Also, you need to follow a different path to view the header information on each client. Below you can see how to view email headers in different webmail clients and desktop email programs.

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Make sure that your email client is open and accessible, and you have the original — or a copy of the — email of which header you want to view.

Webmail Clients

Gmail

  1. Open the email.
  2. Click the three dots next to the Reply button, and the More button.
  3. Click Show Original. You will be prompted with a window with the header information.

Yahoo! Mail

  1. Open the email.
  2. Click the three dots next to the Spam button, and the More button.
  3. Click View raw message. You will be prompted with a window with the header information.

Hotmail

  1.  Open the email.
  2.  Click the arrow next to the Reply button.
  3. Select View Message Source. You will be prompted with a window with the header information.

Outlook (Web or outlook.com)

  1. Open the email.
  2. Click the three dots at the top of the message.
  3. Select View message source. You will be prompted with a window with the header information.

Outlook (Newer Versions)

  1.  Double-click the email and open it outside of the reading pane.
  2. Click File > Properties.
  3. You will see the header information in the Internet Headers section.

Desktop Email Programs

Thunderbird and Other Mozilla Clients

  1. Open the email.
  2. Click the View > Headers > All.
  3. You can see all headers now. If you want to see the message source, click View > Message Source.

Apple Mail

  1.  Open the email.
  2.  Click View > Message > All Headers.
  3. You can see all headers now.

Outlook 2010/2013/2016

  1. Double-click to open the email.
  2. Click File > Properties.
  3. You will see the header information in the Internet Headers section.

Opera

  1. Open the email.
  2. Right-click the email body.
  3. Click View All Headers and Message. You will be prompted with the header information in the window below.
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