MSG to PDF · Free, No Outlook Needed

The usual way to turn an email into a PDF is to open it in Outlook, press Print and pick a PDF printer. That needs Outlook installed, and with many emails you repeat it one message at a time.

Here, "Save as PDF" builds the PDF file directly. The body goes in as real text rather than a picture of text, so you can search and copy it inside the PDF later.

Litigation, audits and HR cases often call for dozens of emails as PDFs. Drop all the .msg files together, pick the messages you need from the list (or all of them), then choose how to save.

"Merge into one PDF" puts the selected emails into a single PDF, one after another. "One PDF per email" makes a separate PDF for each message and bundles them in a ZIP, named by date and subject, like "2024-03-15 Re quote.pdf". Because the date comes first, sorting the folder by name also sorts it by time.

You can narrow the list first by sender, recipient, date range, attachment name or body text, and save only what matches.

With the attachment list turned on, the PDF names every attachment. With PDF appending turned on, the pages of each PDF attachment follow the email body, which is handy for keeping a quote or contract together with the email it came in.

Other attachments such as Word or Excel files are not placed inside the PDF. Save those one by one or all at once as a ZIP.

In Outlook for Windows, dragging an email onto the desktop or into a folder creates a .msg file, and "Save As" uses .msg by default. That is why emails handed over as evidence or records so often arrive as .msg.

On a computer without Outlook, on a Mac or on a phone, there is usually nothing that opens them. Here a browser is all it takes to open one and turn it into a PDF.