Category Archives: Email Headers

Uncover your Email Problems with our Email Delivery Tools

Email delivery is probably the most important connection between Marketing Art and Information Technology. Whether your email is driving sales, connecting to vendors or simply for internal communications, an email that fails to make the Inbox is a failure of communications that can cost your business.

Email Health

A tool that is often overlooked yet is highly beneficial for your email deliverability is our Email Health Report. This tool executes hundreds of domain/email/network setup tests to ensure all of your systems are online and performing optimally. The report returns results for your domain and highlights critical problem areas that need to be resolved.

Get full visibility of your email’s health status in one concise report.
Identify every problem facing your email, including blacklist, mail server, web server, and DNS issues.
Be proactive about email health and detect any current email issues before they cause email failures.

Major MxToolbox Email Delivery Tools

Email delivery is a constantly changing technology landscape. Inbox providers change policies and technologies to protect their users and spammers change methods to get their unwanted messages read. MxToolbox is the Expert in Email Delivery and provides tools to better help you understand your legitimate email delivery issues.

Blocklist (IP or Host): The blocklist check tests a mail server’s IP address against over 100 DNS-based email blocklists.
DMARC Delivery Report: This tool creates comprehensive DMARC reports, providing insight into potential issues and any needed changes to your DMARC policy.
DMARC Report Analyzer: This option makes DMARC Aggregate XML reports human readable by parsing and aggregating them by IP address into helpful reports.
Email Bounceback Analyzer: This analyzer returns details regarding the bounce error, such as the inbox provider, why the message bounced, and additional information to help remedy the issue.
MTA-STS Lookup: This test checks a domain or hostname for an MTA-Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS) DNS TXT record and also for a valid MTA-STS policy.
Spam Analyzer: This tool uses the SpamAssassin software to analyze your message and return a spam score from over 711 various criteria.

Inbox Placement Analysis

Our Inbox Placement tool analyzes your campaign emails before you send them. We determine if the email will make the inbox at major Inbox Providers like Google, Yahoo! and Outlook.com/Office365. We also analyze important technology and soft factors like:

DMARC Compliance
Broken or copious links
Wordiness
Broken or too many images
Spammy verbiage
Other indicators of spam

Inbox Placement is a feature of all paid Delivery Center plans, so you can test your marketing emails and improve your DMARC compliance all in one place.

Does DMARC and email deliverability seem too complicated?

MxToolbox Experts are here with a Managed Services approach to your email configuration issues.

Validity goes behind a Paywall

Validity recently announced that their Universal Feedback Loop ARF reports were no longer a free service but going to be a paid subscription. They are replacing their individual ARF reports with a free aggregate report today.

What is Validity ARF Reports?

Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) is standard that allows Inbox Providers to provide Feedback or Recipient Complaint information to legitimate email senders. The data contained in a ARF report can be as limited as the subject of the email and number of complaints or may be highly detailed information, like:

Date and Time of the Complaint
Date and Time of the Email Sent
Subject of the email
Email Addresses Unsubscribing
Email Addresses Complaining
Email Addresses Failing
Type of Failure or Complaint

However, Validity ARF reports only contain minimally actionable information: Subject, Date and Type of Complaint and email header with obfuscated recipient data.

Who does the change affect?

MxToolbox Delivery Center customers with a Validity Feedback Loop/Complaint integration will lose access to new Validity data on September 22, 2023. MxToolbox is investigating the value of integrating with their free aggregate version of the Universal Feedback Loop systems or terminate the integration with Validity.

Our product team is constantly evaluating the potential for new integrations to ensure that our Recipient Complaints feature provides detailed, actionable insight to our customers. While Validity ARF reports contained some actionable insight when free, the impact when compared to DMARC data and other sources of Feedback Loops will be minor to most customers.

MxToolbox’s Stance

MxToolbox has always been an advocate for improving email delivery and an early adopter of DMARC and Feedback Loop aggregation technology. Feedback Loops were intended to be used to improve the quality of email and reduce the quantity of unwanted email, so, placing Feedback Loop and Complaint information behind a paywall seems like the wrong direction. The additional costs will be especially rough for small-to-medium businesses to bear.

MxToolbox Free Email Delivery Tools

MxToolbox has always been a provider of Free Email Delivery Tools. From our early days Blacklist Lookups and Monitors have been free to use. We continue to expand our suite of free tools to help businesses improve email delivery.

DKIM is no longer optional

DKIM has been around for more than a decade but was not widely used until the DMARC standard added DKIM alignment and authentication as one of it’s passing criteria. Even now, many of our customers are telling us that DKIM is difficult to implement and they view is as less important than a proper SPF configuration. However, a new trend is making DKIM an absolute email delivery requirement.

What is DKIM?

DKIM is a technology that allows email senders to cryptographically sign their outbound email. This signature can then be verified by the recipient as proof that the email was legitimately from the domain signing it and that the message was not altered during transit to the recipient system. You can learn more about DKIM on our blog.

How does DKIM work with DMARC?

For an email to be DMARC compliant (and therefore more likely to be accepted and make it to the Inbox), an email must either pass SPF checks or DKIM alignment and authentication checks. This allowed for some edge cases, for example: an email could fail SPF because the sending IP address was new or because Marketing adopted a new 3rd party email sender that was not in the SPF record, but if DKIM was properly implemented, it would still be DMARC compliant. Similarly, if DKIM was missing or if a forwarder had broken the DKIM signatures, then the email could be DMARC compliant if it passed SPF checks. When DMARC was still in the adoption phase, these allowances for edge cases made sense and are still part of the standard.

How did DKIM become necessary?

While the DMARC standard specifies a minimum threshold for compliance, Inbox Providers and businesses can set higher thresholds to protect their users. Our Experts are now seeing Inbox Providers and many large businesses require DKIM compliance as part of their inbound email vetting processes. Basically, if your email does not pass both SPF and DKIM compliance checks, you may not make the inbox.

Get DKIM compliant as soon as possible! The only downside is the cost of initial setup but the long-term (and potentially immediate) benefit of DKIM compliance means that you are more likely to get delivered and make the inbox.

How can MxToolbox help?

Our Experts are here to get you SPF, DKIM and DMARC compliant and help you manage the on-going maintenance that keeps your email delivery in peak form. MxToolbox Delivery Center has tools to get you DMARC compliant, test Inbox Placement and react to Recipient Complaints. Or leverage our expert team with Managed Email Services.

DKIM Signature Tags, A Primer

DKIM is a form of email authentication that allows an organization to claim responsibility for a message by signing it in a way that can be validated by the recipient. DKIM Authentication is an important part of DMARC compliance and obtaining the best email deliverability possible for your domain.

DKIM tags are located within the actual DKIM-Signature header data. A tag is typically a single letter followed by an equal sign (=). The value of each DKIM tag denotes a specific piece of intel about the email sender, the message itself, and its public key location.

There are several tags available to an email sender using DKIM, with some being required and some being optional. If a required tag is omitted in the DKIM signature, a verification error with the mailbox provider will occur. Of note, tags included in the DKIM signature that do not have a value assessed are treated as having an empty value. However, tags not included in the DKIM signature are treated as having the default value.

Required DKIM Tags

Below are the required tags of a DKIM-Signature header. Any DKIM signatures missing these tags will produce an error during the verification process.

v= version of DKIM standard being used. The value should always be set to 1.
a= cryptographic algorithm used to generate the signature. The value should be rsa-sha256.
d= domain used with the selector record (s=) to locate the public key. The value is a domain name owned by the sender.
s= selector record name used with the domain to locate the public key in DNS. The value is a name or number created by the sender.
h= list of headers that will be used in the signing algorithm to create the hash found in the b= tag. The order of the headers in the h= tag is the order in which they were presented during DKIM signing; therefore, it is also the order in which they should be presented during verification. The value is a list of header fields that will not change or be removed.
bh= computed hash of the message body. The value is a string of characters representing the hash determined by the hash algorithm.
b= cryptographic signature of the headers listed in the h= tag. This hash is also called the DKIM signature.

Optional DKIM Tags

Recommended

Below are the optional tags that are typically recommended in a DKIM-Signature header. DKIM signatures missing these tags will not produce an error during verification, but they are recommended as a means to help identify spam.

Note: Spammers do not normally set time values. Empty or incorrect time values, such as an expiration time dated before the email timestamp, will cause some mailbox providers to reject the message.

t= DKIM signature timestamp. It is meant to indicate the time the message is sent. The format is the number of seconds from 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970 (UTC).
x= DKIM signature expiration time in the same format as above. The value of this tag must be greater than the value of the timestamp tag if both are used in the DKIM signature. DKIM signatures could be considered invalid if the verification time at the verifier is past the expiration date, so be sure not to set the expiration date too soon.

Not Required

Below are the optional tags that are not required in the DKIM signature.

c= canonicalization algorithm that defines to a mailbox provider what level of modifications may be present as the email is in transit to the mailbox provider. Modifications can include whitespace or line wrapping. Some email servers make minor modifications to the email during transit, which can invalidate the signature.
i= identity of the user or agent. The value is an email address containing the domain or subdomain as defined in the d= tag.

Not Recommended

Below are the optional tags that are not recommended in any DKIM signature.

l= number of characters from the message body that were used to compute the body hash (bh=). If this value is not present, it is assumed the entire message body was used. This tag can be difficult to control and could lead to verification errors.
z= list of the message’s original headers and may differ from the headers listed in the h= tag. This tag may be used by some mailbox providers in the process of diagnosing a verification error. Its value is not well defined.

MxToolbox Delivery Center helps you with DKIM Compliance

To maintain the highest levels of email deliverability using DKIM, businesses like yours need a proven Email Delivery management system like MxToolbox Delivery Center. Delivery Center provides you with valuable insight into your email delivery posture and the ongoing maintenance necessary to maintain peak performance:

Manage SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (and BIMI) to improve compliance and reduce the threat of fraud and phishing using your domain.
Review daily volume and SPF, DKIM, and DMARC compliance rates to ensure the best email deliverability.
Implement Feedback Loops to gain unique information on how your recipients view your emails and when they mark you as spam.
Gradually move your DMARC policy to Reject to enable better inbox placement opportunities.
Manage the on-going requirements of maintaining high levels of email deliverability

Has your email been Spoofed?

Email spoofing can harm your corporate brand, decrease open rates for your legitimate email, cause legitimate email to be blocked, compromise website security and even create financial complications. No company is totally immune from malicious email spoofing using their domain, but there are ways to protect yourself. Spoofing comes in a few different forms:

Simple Domain Spoofing – a spammer sends email that looks like it is from your domain, but originates from a server that you do not control or not in your SPF record.
Hacked SPF Sender – A spammer hacks a legitimate sender, one listed in your SPF records, and sends email that appears to be from you.
Hacked Internal Account – A hacker compromises an internal email box and sends email via legitimate sources.
Similar Domain Spoofing – A spammer sets up a complete domain that has a similar name to yours. For example, “example.com” versus “exarnple.com” or “exampIe.com”.

Recently some fraudsters were brazen enough to attempt to spoof email from MxToolbox.com. This illustrates how our experts (and MxToolbox Delivery Center Product) protect us from fraud and phishing and how we can protect your company too.

DNS Configuration

Good email delivery and protection from fraud and phishing attempts requires expert management of your DNS. Four DNS protocols are particularly important:

SPF allows you to delegate outbound email to 3rd parties.
DKIM allows you to crytographically sign email to take ownership of the email you send.
DMARC provides two very useful features:
- Allows you to designate email addresses to receive feedback on your email delivery.
- Allows you to set an email delivery policy for how inbox providers handle email that isn’t DMARC compliant with either SPF or DKIM.
BIMI allows you to provide an icon that inbox providers may display if your email passes DMARC with a strict DMARC policy

Our spoofer used IP addresses outside of our SPF so failed SPF checks and DMARC compliance. Additionally, our DMARC policy is set to reject, so inbox providers knew to discard these failed emails immediately. Our expertly configured DNS helped us reduce the impact of this attack on our email delivery, our customers and the non-customers targeted.

You might think that DNS configuration is all you need to protect your email delivery, but there is more.

Visibility

SPF, DKIM and DMARC Passing Rates

While DNS configuration is the most important first step in email deliverability, you need constant visibility into your email delivery status in order to protect your brand. MxToolbox Delivery Center provides important insight into your email delivery posture with real-time statistics on SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass and fail rates across all your email senders, legitimate and fraudulent.

In this case, MxToolbox Experts quickly noticed a spike in email from illegitimate sources. Delivery Center reported this spike by analyzing DMARC reports approximately 24-48 hours before we began to receive bounceback notices from targeted inbox providers. With strict ‘Reject’ DMARC policies in effect, our Expert team could rely on most inbox providers dumping these emails without delivery, however, we needed to analyze the potential risk.

Bounce Analysis

MxToolbox Delivery Center integrates a Bounceback analysis tool that allows us to analyze bounceback email messages from dozens of inbox providers to determine the reason an email failed to make it to the intended recipient.

Bounceback messages can help you understand recent attacks and prevent new ones. For example, a bounceback due to Reverse DNS failure, as above, is an indicator that your spammer was using a server outside of your network and not listed in your SPF as was our recent spammer. Bounceback messages can also provide insight into other reasons for delivery failure, including blacklisting, malware/spam content and more.

Feedback Loops

The newest visibility feature of MxToolbox Delivery Center incorporates Feedback Loops. Feedback Loops allow Inbox Providers to return information from inbox owners to the original senders, including much of the original message header. Analyzing message content and headers returned via feedback loops gives you unique insight into how your email is being perceived by recipients. Did the recipient report you as spam? Was the email actually fraudulent? Was the content yours but appeared spammy? Feedback loops are very powerful and a necessary part of maintaining high quality email delivery.

Get ahead with Delivery Center

To maintain the highest levels of email deliverability, businesses like yours need a proven Email Delivery management system like MxToolbox Delivery Center. Delivery Center provides you with valuable insight into your email delivery posture and the on-going maintenance necessary to maintain peak performance:

Who is sending email purporting to be from your domain
What is the reputation of your senders’ IPs
Geolocation of your senders and What their blacklist reputations are
How your SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup is performing
What senders are failing DKIM
What senders are failing SPF verification
When to setup more restrictive policies for DMARC
What on-going maintenance you need to maintain and improve your email deliverability

Office 365 Joins ARC

Microsoft is the latest prominent name to adopt the Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) email protocol. The ARC standard is now available for every Office 365 hosted mailbox. Already used by Google (Gmail, G Suite, Groups) and other email providers, the continued adoption ARC improves email delivery and security.

What Is ARC?

ARC is a new protocol designed to provide an authenticated “chain of custody” for emails. Essentially, this initiative requires that each forwarding email system handles the message in a standard way to preserve the DKIM wrappers. This allows each inbox provider in the chain to see what other intermediaries have handled it along the way and verify the DKIM signature of the message at each step throughout the delivery process.

ARC leverages the DMARC and DKIM email authentication standards to help fight email spoofing and improve email delivery for forwarded messages. Prior to ARC, the chain of custody may or may not have been preserved for forwarded emails, resulting in legitimate mail being rejected. With the implementation of ARC, email forwarded to Office 365 will be more likely to be delivered as DKIM signatures will be preserved.

Seeing the Benefits of ARC

RFC 8617, specifies the ARC standard for inbox providers, but, what does that mean for business senders? First, you need to adopt the basic email deliverability standards – SPF, DKIM and DMARC. If you have not already read it, MxToolbox has a great guide to setting up these protocols. Once you have SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup, inbox providers that have adopted ARC will automatically process your email appropriately.

MxToolbox Delivery Center provides everything you need to manage the on-going maintenance of email delivery. Learn more about Delivery Center and how we can help you with email deliverability!

The ROI of Implementing DKIM on Outbound Email

For any business that sends email, becoming DMARC compliant should be a top priority. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a protocol that contributes to DMARC compliance and enables a company to take responsibility for sent messages by signing them cryptographically. Recipients of DKIM-compliant email can then verify incoming email by the signature. Essentially, DKIM establishes a trusted relationship – recipients know who the sender is because the sender is taking responsibility for the email. While implementation might be complicated, if your company has not implemented DKIM for all active domains/subdomains and with all sending systems, you may be risking your email deliverability.

Benefits of DKIM

DKIM is all about ownership. If your business isn’t cryptographically signing its outbound messages, why should message recipients trust you? You aren’t taking ownership of what you send. In today’s environment, there is too much risk in email.

On the other hand, if you are currently DKIM signing emails, your email is more likely to be delivered. Recipient email servers are more confident allowing DKIM-signed messages to be delivered to the inbox, as DKIM is notoriously difficult to spoof. With DKIM implemented, your business is in a better position and more protected from harmful spoofing and phishing attacks, which also safeguards your customer base.

In recent years, the DKIM protocol has become increasingly popular with many ISPs. Major inbox providers like Yahoo! and Gmail were early adopters for outbound emailing. Now, many ISPs use DKIM authentication as a method to filter incoming mail. In this case, a sender adds a digital signature within the email header that’s verified against a published key for the domain in question.

When a mail server receives an email, it evaluates the DKIM signature in the message header and then performs the following tasks:

Retrieve the public key of the sending domain via DNS lookup
Use the key to decrypt the electronic signature in the email header
Verify the hash value for the content

In that sense, DKIM is a beneficial method of increasing both your company’s email deliverability and sender reputation since it allows the receiving mail server to verify your reliability. As DKIM’s prevalence grows, it’s wise (and advantageous) to adopt this technology.

DKIM Tools

At MxToolbox, email delivery is our passion. We provide a wide assortment of tools to help your business achieve optimal message deliverability to protect your brand and reach customers as intended. Our DKIM Record Lookup tool will test a domain name and selector for a valid published DKIM key record. Looking for a more comprehensive analysis? Our Email Deliverability tool is a comprehensive deliverability report that analyzes your headers, blacklist reputation of outbound IP address, and SPF records. MxToolbox helps you identify any known issues related to DKIM. To receive achieve high delivery rates, implement DKIM today. As always, we’re here to help.

New Features for MxToolbox

At MxToolbox, we’re continuously striving to provide cutting-edge tools to help our customers improve their company’s email practice. As you can see on our Network Tools page, we offer a wide-range of helpful free tools and paid products that ensure your business email platform is working at its optimal level. And since we’re routinely updating and expanding our collection of tools, we recommend you visit the page often for the latest developments. For the most recent updates and newest tools please check out the NEW! tab. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more popular MxToolbox features.

NetworkTools-21April2019

Email Tab

The email portion of the Network Tools page contains some of our most popular tools such as the MX Lookup and Blacklist Check; and offers several other essential diagnostic tools that can greatly benefit your company’s email setup. For example, the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC tools now support improved message delivery and provide feedback catered to your business domain. Moreover, the two specific DNS record generators features (SPF and DMARC) MxToolbox offers under this tab help create records for the respective protocols.

Network Tab

For this section of Network Tools, the ASN Lookup and Domain Health Report tools are highlighted points. For example, the ASN (Autonomous System Number) Lookup query takes either an AS name or AS number as input and returns the missing component. For immediate feedback regarding your domain, the Domain Health Check will execute hundreds of domain/email/network performance tests to ensure your systems are online and performing optimally. In addition, the report will provide results for your company’s domain and highlight any critical problem areas that need attention.

DNS Tab

The DNS tab provides all the key DNS tools to help make sure your DNS records are published correctly and your DNS is operating at 100% such as DNS Lookup, DNS Check, and Whois. This list of tools also contains some advanced DNS Security diagnostic tools such as nsec, rrsig, and more.

MxToolbox’s Newest Additions and Updates

Among the many email tools MxToolbox offers, there are a few that stand out. Although we love each equally, if forced to name favorites, these come to mind:

DMARC Report Analyzer – One of our newest tools, this feature will make DMARC Aggregate XML reports human readable by parsing and sorting them by IP address into understandable reports.
DMARC Generator – Another new tool we’re proud of, this generator will help you create a DMARC record specifically for the domain/subdomain that you submit. Simply put, this tool’s a must for your DMARC implementation.
Header Analyzer – Found under the Email tab, this tool will make email headers human readable by parsing them. This helpful feature is a popular tool to which we’ve recently added DMARC, SPF, and DKIM testing functionality.
Email Deliverability – Also under the Email tab umbrella, this tool has been updated for easy workability. Send a test email to us, and we take over from there to generate a comprehensive deliverability report. To receive crucial data regarding your email status, definitely try this tool.

MxToolbox strives to provide your business the most beneficial information related to your email platform. By offering your company a variety of free tools to gain optimal deliverability, we believe our tools allow your messages to be delivered successfully. This not only protects your business, but also your customers. Whether found under one or more tabs, the features shown on the Network Tools page are vital to your email rates. Be sure to explore the page and try as many as desired. We’re here to help.

MxToolBox Email Header Analyzer Makes Email Headers Readable

How to Get Email Headers – A Guide from MxToolBox

1 Reply

This Guide has been Updated – http://mxtoolbox.com/Public/Content/EmailHeaders/

When reporting spam that slips past the filters, it is essential that we receive the full message headers from a message. Additionally, sometimes our Support department may request the full headers from an email message in order to troubleshoot mail delivery problems.

Every single Internet e-mail message is made up of two parts the header and the message body of the email. Every single email you send or receive on the Internet contains an Internet Header, a full and valid e-mail header provides a detailed log of the network path taken by the message between the mail sender and the mail receiver(s) (email servers).

Your email client program will usually hide the full header or display only lines, such as From, To, Date, and Subject, see below for more information on pulling headers for your email client:

Note: Please put a short but descriptive note in the subject or the body of the message so we can quickly assess your issue or problem.

Note: If you need assistance in understanding email headers, please feel free to use our Email Header Analyzer.

Outlook 2003
Outlook 2007
Outlook 2010
Outlook Express
Outlook 97
Outlook 98
Outlook 2000
Outlook 2002
Microsoft Exchange
Zimbra
Entourage
Mac OS X Mail
Outlook Express for Macintosh
Gmail (works for Google Apps as well)
Yahoo!
AOL
Hotmail
Eudora
Netscape, Mozilla or Thunderbird
Lotus Notes
Pine
XtraMail
Pegasus Mai l
Claris Emailer
Mail Warrior
Juno
Novell Groupwise

Outlook 2003 – Back to Top

To begin, open the email message in a new window by double-clicking on it.
On this new window menu, go to View -> Options. If you do not see options, you may have to reveal it by clicking on the two down arrows at the bottom of the menu.
This will have brought up the Message Options window. The last component of this is the Internet Headers. Right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Options window.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook 2007 – Back to Top

Double click on the email message so that it is opened in its own window. If you are new to Outlook 2007, you will be working on what is called the Ribbon. This is a series of tabs across the top of the message, Message, Developer etc.
On the Message tab, in the Options section there is a little button with an arrow in it. Click on it and you have the message options menu with the internet headers in the bottom section.
This will have brought up the Message Options window. The last component of this is the Internet Headers.
Right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Options window.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook 2010 – Back to Top

Double click on the email message so that it is opened in its own window.
On the Message tab, in the Options section there is a little button with an arrow in it. Click on it and you have the message options menu with the internet headers in the bottom section.
This will bring up the Message Options window. The last component of this is the Internet Headers.
Right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Options window.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook Express – Back to Top

To begin, open the email message in a new window by double-clicking on it.
From the File menu, click Properties.
Click the Details tab.
Click Message Source. A new window will open containing all the headers and original message:
Right-click anywhere inside this window and choose Select All.
Right-click again and choose Copy.
Close this window, the details window and the message window (so you are back to the main Outlook Express program).
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook 97 – Back to Top

To view headers in Outlook 97, it may require the update: Internet Mail Enhancement Patch

If you already have the update or just installed it, open any message and look for Internet headers on the Options tab. If you don’t see the Options tab, choose View | Message Header to display it.

Outlook 98 – Back to Top

Open the message you’d like to view headers for.
Click Options from the drop-down menus.
Near the bottom of the screen you’ll see a section titled Internet Headers.
Right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook 2000 – Back to Top

Open the message you’d like to view headers for.
Select Options, then Full Headers.
Right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook 2002 – Back to Top

Open the message you’d like to view headers for.
Click Options from the drop-down menu.
A box called Message Options pops up.
Near the bottom of the box you’ll see a text area titled Internet headers.
Right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Microsoft Exchange – Back to Top

Click the “File” menu
Click “Properties”
Click the “Details” tab
Click “Message Source”
Highlight, copy and paste everything in the “Message Source” windows

Zimbra – Back to Top

Right click the desired message and select Show Original
This will open a new window with the source headers, select all and send in a new message to spam@mxtoolbox.com.

Entourage – Back to Top

To begin, open the email message in a new window by double-clicking on it.
Choose View > Internet Headers.
Click inside the new box that appears in your message and choose Edit > Select All.
Click inside the box again and choose Edit > Copy
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Mac OS X Mail – Back to Top

To begin, open the email message in a new window by double-clicking on it.
View > Message > Raw Source
Copy the headers by right clicking, selecting all and then choosing copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Outlook Express for Macintosh – Back to Top

Select the email.
Choose View and then choose Source.
A new window will appear containing the email with full headers.
Press command + A, to select all, then command + C to copy.

Gmail (works for Google Apps as well) – Back to Top

Open the message you’d like to view headers for.
Click the down arrow next to Reply, at the top-right of the message pane.
Select Show original.
The full headers will appear in a new window, simply right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Yahoo! – Back to Top

Go to Options > General Preferences
Under Mail Viewing Preferences, go to Message Headers, then select ALL.
Hit the small down arrow next to Forward and choose As Inline Text.
Forward the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com.

AOL – Back to Top

The email files are in an html format. The objective is to save the file in html format. This can be done as follows:

To begin, open the email message by clicking on it.
Click on Details (right above the To: and From: fields) and choose View Message Source.
The full headers will appear in a new window, simply right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Hotmail – Back to Top

In the left pane, click Mail.
In the Folders list, click Inbox.
Once in the Inbox, click on the message that you are getting the headers for.
Right-click the message in the message list, and then click View source.
The full headers will appear in a new window, simply right-click inside the headers and choose Select All, then right-click again and choose Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Eudora – Back to Top

To begin, open the email message in a new window by double-clicking on it.
Click on the tool bar icon labeled blah, blah, blah.
Copy the headers by right clicking, selecting all and then choosing copy.
Choose Edit > Copy.
Close the Message Source box.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Netscape, Mozilla or Thunderbird – Back to Top

To begin, open the email message in a new window by double-clicking on it.
Choose View > Headers > All
This will expand the top of your email message and it will now include the full headers.
Right-click again and choose Copy.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

Lotus Notes – Back to Top

Lotus Notes v.4.x

Look for the first line that begins with “Received”. There should be a blank line just above it.
Then, scroll down to the next blank line. The data in-between the two blank lines are the headers you need.

Lotus Notes v.5.x

Open your inbox
Highlight the message that you wish to get header information for.
Choose File -> Export…
Type in a filename, leave the type as “Structured Text” and click Export
From the Dialog Box that comes up, choose “Selected Documents” and click OK
Now you can open that message you saved in WordPad and Cut and Paste it.

Pine – Back to Top

You must configure Pine to allow showing message headers. You may skip steps 1-6 below if you have performed this configuration.

Press the h key while viewing the message to show full headers. If this returns the error Command h not defined for this screen, do the following:
Go to the Pine start up screen.
Hit s for Setup.
Hit c for Config.
Scroll down to the section labeled Advanced Command Preferences.
Put an x for the enable-full-header-cmd feature.
Type E to exit Config, and Y to save changes.
The next time you read a message, type H and the full headers will be displayed at the top of the message. Type H again to hide the headers.
You should now be looking at the original message window. Click on forward and address the message to spam@mxtoolbox.com. In the area above the copied part of the message, Paste the Internet Headers and click Send.

XtraMail – Back to Top

Log into XtraMail
Click on “Options” in the left-hand navigation bar.
Click the “Display” button.
Change the Message Headers option to “Full”.
Click the OK button to confirm.

Pegasus Mail – Back to Top

In the New Mail or other folder window:
Right click the message, and select Message Properties.
In the right hand column uncheck the box beside Contains HTML data.
Click OK. That should allow you to see the message as a text message only.
Click Ctrl-H to bring up the full headers.

Claris Emailer – Back to Top

Version 2.0 and higher:

Use the “Show Long Headers” option in the “Mail” menu while you have the message open.

Versions earlier than 2.0:

Click the blue triangle near the “from” information to show additional message information
Click the “Show Original Headers…” button to bring up the full header info.

Mail Warrior – Back to Top

When viewing the message, click File, then Save Message As.
A standard save window will appear.
Save the message as a .txt file (document.txt).
Open the file you created, select all (ctrl-A) and copy (ctrl-c).
And paste (ctrl-v).

Juno Version 4+ – Back to Top

On the drop down menu “Options”
Choose “Email Options” (press ctrl-E)
Under “Show Message Headers”, select the “full” option.
Click the OK button to save the setting. Juno version 4+ can display MIME and HTML email, but does not provide a way of viewing the HTML Source for the message within Juno.

Novell GroupWise – Back to Top

Open the message
In the message window select: File > Attachments > View
Select the Mime.822 attachment

Note: If you need assistance in understanding email headers, please feel free to use our Email Header Analyzer.