Message Headers - Online Help | Zoho Campaigns

Message Headers

Understanding message headers

In short: every email carries a hidden header block recording where it came from, the servers it passed through, and—most usefully today—whether it passed authentication. Steps for each major provider are below; if a menu has changed, the universal method that follows works almost everywhere.

Message headers give away important details such as:
  • The source of an email (the From address)
  • The IP address / server the email was sent from
  • The detailed path the email was transmitted through
  • Authentication results—whether SPF, DKIM, and DMARC passed
  • The message content and structure (MIME parts)
Message Headers – An infographic

Headers are unique to each message and can be used to verify a sender’s credibility. The single most useful line today is Authentication-Results, which shows whether SPF, DKIM, and DMARC passed. This section shows how to locate the header information in different email clients.

The quickest universal method

Mail apps redesign their menus often, so if the exact wording for your provider below has changed, either of these works almost everywhere:
  • Look in the message’s More menu. Open the email, click the More (⋯, ⋮, ▾, or “i”) icon near Reply or the date, and choose whichever option it offers: Show original, View source, View raw message, Message source, View headers, or Extended header information.
  • Forward as an attachment. To send a header to a support team (including ours), use “Forward as attachment” rather than a normal forward—this keeps the original headers intact as an .eml file.
What to copy: when pasting a header as text, include everything from the very first line down to the first completely blank line—that blank line is where the headers end and the message body begins.

Web service providers

Gmail

  1. Open the email in Gmail.
  2. Click the More (⋮) three-dot menu at the top-right of the message—the one inside the message next to Reply, not Gmail’s main toolbar menu.
  3. Select Show original. A new tab opens with the full headers and an SPF/DKIM/DMARC summary; use Copy to clipboard or Download Original (.eml) as needed.

Yahoo Mail (also AOL Mail and AT&T Mail)

AOL Mail and AT&T Mail are both powered by Yahoo Mail and share its interface, so these steps cover all three:
  1. Open the email in your Yahoo, AOL, or AT&T account.
  2. Click the More (⋯) menu at the top of the message.
  3. Select View raw message from the drop-down.

Outlook.com and the new Outlook (Windows & Mac)

  1. Open the email in Outlook on the web or the new Outlook app.
  2. Click More actions (the ⋯ three-dot menu) on the message.
  3. Choose View → View message details (some versions label this “View message source”).

GMX Mail

  1. Open the email in GMX.
  2. Click the information (“i”) icon at the top-right of the email, just after the date and time.
  3. The Extended Header Information window opens with the full header.

Mail.com

  1. Open the email in Mail.com.
  2. Click the information (“i”) icon at the top-right of the email.
  3. The Extended Header Information pop-up appears. (Mail.com and GMX share the same IONOS platform, so the step is identical.)

Yandex Mail

  1. Open the email in Yandex Mail.
  2. Click the More (⋯) menu on the message.
  3. Select Message properties. (This replaced the older “Message headers” label.)

Mail.ru

  1. Open the email in Mail.ru.
  2. Click the More menu on the message and choose the service-information / view-headers option (Mail.ru’s interface is Russian-first, so the exact label varies by language).
  3. If you can’t find it, use the universal method above (forward as attachment).

Rediffmail

  1. Open the email in Rediffmail.
  2. Click the See Details link shown to the right of the To address.
  3. Click Show full headers to display the complete header.

Inbox.lv

  1. Open the email in Inbox.lv.
  2. Click the More menu at the top-right of the message pane.
  3. Select Message Source. If the label differs, use the universal method above.

Telekom (t-online.de)

Telekom’s current E-Mail Center webmail does not offer a dependable built-in header view (the older Alt-click method no longer applies). The most reliable options are to forward the message as an attachment, or open the account in a desktop client (such as Thunderbird or Outlook, below) and read the header there.

Zoho Mail

  1. Log in to your Zoho Mail account.
  2. Open the email for which you want the headers.
  3. Click the More Actions drop-down at the right corner of the email.
  4. Choose Show original. The header details open in a new window.
  5. To download the header as a .txt file, click Download Full Content; to copy it, choose Copy to clipboard; to view the full HTML source, click Show Full Content.
IdeaMessage ID: the header contains a Message ID unique to each email—handy to have when you contact our support team. See Zoho Mail options.

Desktop email clients

Apple Mail

  1. Open (or select) the message in Apple Mail.
  2. From the menu bar, choose View → Message → Raw Source (or All Headers).
  3. Or press ⌘ + ⌥ + U for raw source (⌘ + ⇧ + H shows all headers).

Classic Outlook for Windows (desktop)

  1. Double-click the message so it opens in its own window.
  2. Go to File → Properties.
  3. Read the header text in the Internet headers box at the bottom.

New Outlook for Windows / Outlook on the web

Use the Outlook.com steps above: open the message, click More actions (⋯), then View → View message details.

Thunderbird

  1. Open the message.
  2. Choose More → View Source, or press Ctrl + U.