EML to PDF — Save Any Saved Email as a PDF

EML to PDF in four steps

1. 1

   Drop your .eml or .msg file into the viewer above (or click the box to browse). The email opens instantly with its headers and formatted body.

2. 2

   Click the Export PDF button at the top-right of the message. A clean print view opens — headers laid out as a neat block, body formatted for paper, navigation and buttons stripped out.

3. 3

   In the print dialog that appears, set the destination/printer to 'Save as PDF' (Chrome/Edge) or use the PDF menu at the bottom-left (Safari on Mac).

4. 4

   Save. You now have a self-contained PDF of the email — sender, date, subject and body preserved — ready to file, share or archive.

On a phone:the same two taps work. On iOS, Export PDF opens the print sheet — pinch out on the preview thumbnail to turn it into a PDF, then use the share sheet to save it to Files. On Android, choose "Save as PDF" as the printer.

Why would you convert an email to PDF at all?

Because an .eml file is a terrible thing to hand another person. It needs a mail client to read, it looks like corrupted text in Notepad, and half the people who receive one will reply asking what to do with it. A PDF opens everywhere, prints predictably, and can be filed in systems that have never heard of MIME. The recurring reasons people run EML to PDF:

• Legal and compliance. Correspondence attached to a filing, a contract confirmation, or a message placed under legal hold. Keep the original file too — see the note on evidence below.
• HR and internal investigations. A complaint thread that has to be shared with people who should not be given access to the mailbox it came from.
• Expenses and accounting. Booking confirmations, receipts and invoices that arrive as email bodies rather than attachments. Most expense systems accept a PDF and nothing else.
• Client and project records. A change of scope agreed in email, filed with the project rather than left in someone's inbox.
• Insurance, warranty and visa paperwork. Processes that ask for documentary proof and reject an .eml file they cannot open.
• Handover and offboarding. Key threads exported before an account is closed, so the knowledge survives the mailbox.

What ends up in the PDF?

The export prints what the viewer displays, so the answer is precise rather than promotional. Here is exactly what survives the conversion and what does not:

How do you get the PDF to look right?

Almost every complaint about an emailed-to-PDF document comes down to a print-dialog setting rather than the email itself. Five that are worth checking before you hit save:

1. Turn on Background graphics. Browsers disable background colours and images by default to save ink. Newsletters and branded templates look broken without it — the toggle is under More settings in Chrome and Edge.
2. Adjust scale before paper size. If a wide layout table is clipped, drop the scale to 80–90% first. It usually fixes the overflow without the awkwardness of a landscape page.
3. Decide about headers and footers. The browser can stamp each page with the date and page numbers. For a casual copy, turn it off for a cleaner document; for a record, leaving it on adds a useful timestamp.
4. Check the page count before saving. A long newsletter can run to twenty pages. The print preview shows the count — if only the first screen matters, set a page range.
5. Save the original file too. Two seconds of extra work. The .eml or .msg is the authoritative artefact; the PDF is the readable copy of it.

What this tool is — and isn't

Honesty first: this is a print-to-PDF bridge, not a server-side conversion engine. We render the email faithfully in your browser and hand it to your browser's print system, which produces the PDF locally. That design is exactly why it's private (no upload), free (no server costs to recoup) and instant (no queue).

What it does well: single emails, converted on the spot, with formatting, inline images and a professional header block. For batch-converting whole folders in one click, see the Pro add-on. Attachments are not embedded inside the PDF — download them separately from the viewer's attachment list before or after exporting.

One practical tip: in the print dialog, enable "Background graphics"if the email's design relies on background colors — browsers turn that off by default to save ink.

Does the email leave your computer during conversion?

No — and on this page that matters more than usual. The emails people convert to PDF are, by definition, the ones important enough to keep: disputes, complaints, contracts, invoices. Compare the two architectures:

• Server-side converters.You upload the message, a machine you cannot inspect converts it, and the file sits in that operator's storage under a retention policy you never read. The message body, every recipient address and every attachment go with it.
• This page.The parser is JavaScript running on your device. Your browser's own print engine makes the PDF. There is no upload endpoint — the site is static pages — so there is nothing to retain and nothing to leak.
• How to verify it yourself.Load this page, turn off your network, then convert a file. It keeps working, which is only possible because no request is being made. You can also watch the Network tab in your browser's developer tools while you export.

MSG to PDF, and other formats

The viewer on this page accepts the same formats as the rest of the site, so the export flow is identical whichever one you have. Outlook .msg files are parsed in the browser and printed the same way — details on the MSG viewer page. Apple Mail .emlx files have their wrapper stripped automatically. If you are not sure which format you were sent, What Is an EML File? has a comparison table, and How to Open an EML File covers what to do per device before you get as far as exporting.

FAQ