How to open MIME Emails and Attachments in Outlook

If you are unable to thread MIME format emails, then the chances are Microsoft Outlook has mistranslated them. The good part is, you can modify them so that it can be read and displayed by your email program. In this post, we show you how to open MIME emails or attachments in Outlook or online.

What is MIME format?

MIME (.mim or .mme) stands for ‘Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions’ is an Internet standard that extends the format of email messages to support text in character sets other than ASCII. These are typical of attachments sent through AOL. AOL and some e-mail software use .mme or .mim files as a “wrapper” for mail that contains non-text attachments like audio, video, and graphics files.

How to open MIME emails in Outlook

To open the MIME email in Outlook, follow these steps:

1. Open the email with the MIME format.
2. Select all text.
3. Open Notepad and paste the MIME-formatted email in it.
4. Delete all text before the email header
5. Save the file by adding the .eml file extension to the file name.
6. Double-click the file you saved earlier to open it.
7. Your email management software will open the file, interpreting it as a standard email.
8. You can now read MIME format email easily.

When the text in your email appears scrambled, garbled, or displays unreadable characters, it means the email client has mistranslated the code. To fix it and open a MIME attachment in Outlook, do the following!

Open the ‘MIME format email’ you received from.

Highlight all the text to select it, by pressing Ctrl+A.

Next, open a text editor like Notepad.

Right-click the empty space in the Notepad and choose the Paste option.

Before attempting to save the file, delete all text before the email header (The headers including the From and To fields).

Now, save the file by adding the .eml file extension to the file name.

Go back to the saved location and double-click the file to open it.

Instantly, your email management program (Microsoft Outlook) will open the file, interpreting it as a standard email and allow you to read MIME format email easily.

How to open MIME attachments in Outlook

You can follow any one of the following methods.

1] Use a MIME opener software

When you try to open a MIME file on your PC, you may be prompted with a message asking, “How do you want to open this file?”

When you see this message, you need to use a program like WinZip. Then, you can extract and decompressing MIME records and view the contents of the file or read it. Simply, select all the files and folders inside the compressed file.

Click 1-click Unzip under Unzip/Share section and choose the Unzip to PC option.

Then, select a destination folder to place the extracting files and click ‘Unzip’ button.

You now know how to open .mime attachments. Find your extracted files in the destination folder.

You can also see if a free universal file viewer like Universal Viewer or Open Freely work.

TIPS:

• S/MIME Reader allows you to decrypt and read S/MIME encrypted emails (.p7m). Get it from the Microsoft Store.
• MIMEView from Nirsoft displays the list of all MIME types defined in your system. For each MIME type, information about the associated file extension and installed plugin is also displayed.

2] Use an online free MIME text viewer

Alternatively, the simplest way to open MIME attachment is to try some online MIME-ATTACHMENT Text Viewer.

Simply visit this link. Choose your MIME attachment file or drag-&-drop it in the space provided.

The tool will automatically open the file in a readable format.

How to open S-MIME emails in Outlook?

To open S/MIME emails in Outlook, ensure that the S/MIME control is installed and enabled. Open Outlook, navigate to Settings > Mail > S/MIME, and follow the instructions to install the control. Once installed, you can easily read encrypted messages. Make sure to restart Outlook for the changes to take effect.