# opening .email files
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 9, 2002, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489 "2002-12-09T11:30:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/1 "2002-12-09T11:30:23Z")
A friend of mine sends me e-mails of files to download that end with .email, but I don’t know what program to use to open them. Anybody know?
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/2 "2002-12-09T12:05:54Z")
I believe that these may be AOL email messages and that you may be able toopen them with Outlook Express if you rename them to **.eml**.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/3 "2002-12-09T12:10:23Z")
how do I rename them?
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### Author:  [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/4 "2002-12-09T12:10:45Z")
And, of course, you can “open” them with notepad, MSWord or any other text or word processor although you will only see the raw text. This is safer if the email may contain any virus.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/5 "2002-12-09T12:14:45Z")
well they’re from a reliable source, I want to be able to view the entire e-mail.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/6 "2002-12-09T12:17:12Z")
just tried notepad: garbled text
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/7 "2002-12-09T12:27:32Z")
Presumably you are receiving them as attachments to a regular mail message? - if so, renaming them will only be possible after you drag them out of the message into a folder somewhere (my personal recommendation would be to either create one that resides on the desktop, or create one elsewhere and create a desktop link to it - then you can drag the attachment out and drop it straight into thew folder.
Then it’s just right-click and select _Rename_.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/8 "2002-12-09T12:36:35Z")
ok, I renamed ending in .eml, and when I tried to open it one of the programs on the list to choose from for opening was outlook Express Migration 5.0, so I chose it. Nothing happened.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/9 "2002-12-09T13:05:24Z")
BTW Mangetout, I have AOL.
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### Author:  [@Iteki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iteki)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/10 "2002-12-09T16:06:18Z")
Be a little bit careful. If you have your computer set up to not show the file endings of common files then the file you are trying to open could be called blahblah.email.exe
This would mean that while it _looks_ like a .email file, it is actually a .exe file. And we know that that is rarely a good thing…
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/11 "2002-12-09T16:24:26Z")
very good point **Iteki**
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2002, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opening-email-files/141489/12 "2002-12-09T20:53:00Z")
I’m pretty sure the e-mails are safe because everyone at my job is getting them from the same person and not having any problems. When I ask them what they use to open them I get answers like, “I don’t know, they just open.”