Opening an MBOX File

The MBOX file type is primarily associated with Thunderbird.

MBOX	File extension: MBOX
	File type:	mailbox

What is an MBOX file

MBOX files mostly belong to Thunderbird by Mozilla. An MBOX file contains email messages saved in UNIX Email Format. The contents of an MBOX file is saved as a single plain text database (mailbox) to which new messages are appended. Each message in a UNIX Mailbox file has the following structure:

From: <sender_numeric_id>@domain.com
To: <Name> <username>@domain.com
Date: <12-character delivery date>
The message's body follows.

Thunderbird email client's ImportExportTools NG add-on can import, export, and read emails saved in MBOX files. Windows MBox Viewer can also read MBOX messages. Tools are available for exporting messages as MBOX files from Outlook and GMAIL.

How do you open MBOX files?

You need a suitable software like Thunderbird to open an MBOX file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your MBOX file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a MBOX file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online MBOX Text Viewer

Choose your .mbox file to view

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

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How to extract texts from MBOX files or capture a screenshot to PDF, JPG, DOCX, TXT, ...

1. Just click the "Choose your .mbox file to view" button on this page.
2. After your file is opened in browser,
3. click "Save as..." in the menu.
4. Then choose the file format (e.g. JPG, PDF, DOCX, TXT, ...) you want.
5. Download the converted file.

MBOX file format:

Each file has a definite file format, that is, how the stored data is arranged in the file. The file format can be determined based on the file extension and the signature (the first few characters of a file). If the file extension does not match the file format, double-clicking on the file will cause an error upon opening. So you need a detailed analysis of a file to find out the format and the associated program. Our evaluation of the MBOX files looks like this:

The MBOX file extension is very common and mainly uses a special format. The two most common formats are as follows:

• 90% of all MBOX files belong to Standard Unix Mailbox. If you open these files in a text editor, you can view and read the content yourself. The files are on average 77 MB in size and range from 140 KB to 1 GB. It is a modern file type. Several words can almost always be found in the files, e.g. From, X-Gmail-Labels, X-GM-THRID, Delivered-To, gmail, Received, Category, Inbox, Unread, by 2002, 0000 2021 and 0000 2020. A common filename is All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox. Files like these are sometimes connected to sampah, inbox, sent, termasuk, email and semua.

The remaining 10% of all MBOX files are files with no common format. These files sometimes refer to archived, category, allmail, spamand, imap, personal or gmail. Just click the "Choose your .mbox file to view" button on this page to find out what your MBOX file is.