Viewing the Message Source / Full Headers of an Email
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
When diagnosing issues with email delivery and analyzing the properties of an email message, it is almost always the case that one needs to obtain either the “full headers” of the message or the “source” of the message.
The “message source” is the complete raw content that represents the message. This includes all of the “metadata” about the message (who its from and to, the subject, etc.) as well the body content and all of the attachments. The full message source really contains two distinct parts — the full headers and the body. The full headers are at the beginning of the message source and continue until a blank line is reached; one or more blank lines separate the headers from the body.
In this article, we are not going to discuss what is in the headers or body, or how that information is formatted. Instead, we will show you how to retrieve this information when using different kinds of email programs and web-based systems. With these instructions, you should be able to get the “full headers” from any email message located in most email systems. This information can be helpful to your technical support representatives when analyzing message behavior.
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