This article explains how to see the full email headers in Outlook.com. This information applies to Outlook.com and Outlook Online.

What to Know

  • Open a message in Outlook. Select More Actions (the three-dot menu).Choose View message source to reveal the header information at the top of the email.

See Full Email Headers in Outlook.com

When you want to trace spam to its source and report the spam to the internet service provider, or when you need to to see mailing list commands hidden in header lines, view the full headers for the message. By default, Outlook.com shows only a few important headers, but you can make it display all header lines.

To access the full message headers in Outlook.com:

  • Open the message whose headers you want to examine.
  • Select More actions (the 3 dots … in the upper right).
  • Select View message source.
  • The header information will be at the top of the email. You’ll see not only the header information but HTML formatting for the email as well.
  • Select Close when you finish viewing the header information.

What Do Email Header Lines Look Like?

An email’s header lines can look like the following highlighted example below:

Open the message whose headers you want to examine.

Select More actions (the 3 dots … in the upper right).

Select View message source.

The header information will be at the top of the email. You’ll see not only the header information but HTML formatting for the email as well.

Select Close when you finish viewing the header information.

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