How to download Microsoft Outlook emails
Email services tend to offer nearly unlimited storage space. Your emails can remain online, in your inbox or archived, for years. Emails themselves are small unless they have files attached to them. Email services will normally cap the size of an attachment so generally speaking, emails are small and easy to store long term.
While emails remain online in an easy to retrieve format, you can also download them as files. An email message, when downloaded, contains the original message and attached files, and it includes information about the sender, the recipient, the origins of the email, and more.
Download Microsoft Outlook emails
Microsoft Outlook is both a web-based email service, and a desktop app. The desktop app can connect to any email service and fetch messages from it. Both the web service and the desktop app allow users to download the emails that are recevied.
Download Microsoft Outlook emails – web
To download emails from Outlook web, you have to attach a message to a new email, and send it to yourself. You will then be able to download the attached file.
- Open Outlook web.
- Look for the message you want to download (make sure it is visible in the inbox column).
- Click New Message.
- Click and drag the message from the Inbox column and drop it onto the new message.
- Add a recipient, and subject, and send it.
- Assuming you sent the message to yourself, you will be able to download it as an EML file like any other attachment.
Download Microsoft Outlook emails – desktop
Downloading an email from the Microsoft Outlook desktop app is much simpler than the web app but the message saves in the MSG format and must converted to the universal EML format that all email clients can open.
- Open Outlook on your desktop.
- Double-click the message you want to download.
- The message will open in a new window.
- In the new window, go to File>Save as.
- Save the message in the MSG format.
- Visit the MSG to EML web app.
- Upload the MSG file and click the download button.
- Save the EML file.
Conclusion
Saving emails, regardless of which service it is received on or which app you’re viewing it in is possible. Gmail makes the process much easier than Outlook does but Gmail is really only one email service. If you’re using Outlook, the web app and it’s ability to attach an email to another email is possibly the easiest way to download a message. You can also forward the message to other email services or configure it with a different email client. The message will remain unchanged and will download in full.
