How to Open EML File With/Without Outlook? Best Ways

Sophia
Published: Nov 28, 2025 • 4 Minutes Reading

Are you looking forward to knowing how to open EML files with or without Outlook? If yes, then you are on the right post. An EML file contains complete information about an email, including attachments, headers, the email body, and more. However, many users face difficulties accessing EML files on their devices because the system is unsure which application should be used to open them.

Today, in this blog post, we are going to explain the practical steps to view EML files with or without the Outlook email client. Before discussing the working steps, let us first look at the methods we will cover in this technical guide to help you resolve the issue.

How to Open EML File in Outlook Email Client?

At the start, locate your EML file on your PC.
Next, click on the EML file and click Open With.
Now, select Outlook as the opening option.
Finally, by following the above steps, you can successfully access your EML file in Outlook.

Reasons to Open EML File Without Outlook

As we have discussed, EML files contain a lot of important data of users in the form of text messages, email headers, and attachments. Hence, there are multiple reasons why they need instant access to these files, even without Outlook. We have discussed a few of them here.

There can be times when users want access to orphan EML files instantly but they don’t necessarily have the Outlook application or any other email clients pre-installed on their system.
Many times, investigators need to save and print the EML files as PDFs so that they can present them as evidence in court.
To perform in-depth research related to the email header to sort emails, users require different preview options for these EML files.

Now, in the next section, we will discuss the top 4 methods available to users to open EML file without Outlook for free.

#1 Method: Use Desktop Browser

First, locate the EML file in your file explorer.
Next, open any browser on your PC screen.
After that, drag and drop the EML file to the browser.
Finally, you can read your EML file content in a browser.

Note: This method only allows you to access your EML file body in the browser. The rest of the data of your EML file, like attachments, headers, is not accessible via this approach.

#2 Method: Use Notepad

Initially, select the EML file from the file explorer.
Next, open the Notebook application on your Windows PC.
After that, drag and drop the EML file to Notepad.
Finally, you can view a raw EML message in Notepad without using Outlook.

Tip: This method is useful only for forensic examiners to examine an EML file. Using this technique, you can only access the raw view of EML file. The EML file opened in Notepad is not readable for normal users.

#3 Use Online Viewer to Open EML File Without an Email Client

At the start, open the free online EML viewer on your PC.
Next, click on the Select Files option to batch open EML files without Outlook.
After that, select the EML files for accessing and click Open.
Now, select the EML files from the left column and access them for free.

Expert Tip: This expert solution is best suited to access EML files without the Outlook email client, as it is solely a browser-based viewer. It never takes your data to any third-party server. All the processing to view your EML file is done on your browser.

#4 Use Offline Viewer to Access EML File Without Outlook

Users can also take the help of BitRecover EML File Viewer, which enables them to access the EML files in offline mode with all formatting, metadata, and related attachments. Follow the below guided steps below.
free way to open eml file without Outlook

At the start, install and run the suggested utility.
Next, click on the Open button and select the EML file folder.
After that, click on the selected folder in the left sidebar.
Finally, you can open an EML file without Outlook in offline mode.

Note: Our research team has chosen this offline viewer just because of the exclusive feature of this tool to save the data in different easily accessible formats like PDF, HTML, DOC, RTF, etc.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion to the above blog on the topic of how to open EML file with/without Outlook, we have discussed 5 techniques. To access EML files in Outlook or without using the Outlook email client. Additionally, we have discussed the reasons for opening EML file without Outlook.