2

I'm trying to create an offline archive of my emails for future reference. I chose Outlook's .msg format because

1) It's a popular format that won't die anytime soon

2) It's a single, self contained file (unlike html)

But when I save emails with inline images, they aren't embedded like attachments. Instead, they still link to their external source, so if I go offline, they won't display properly. I find it odd that Outlook would keep the attachments but not the inline images, so I assume there's a setting involved.

So my question is, how do I get Outlook to embed the inline images within a saved email, so they can be viewed offline?

Cheers

2 Answers 2

3

You can save your email messages as MSG files using MsgExtract. It allows you to:

  • Download and embed the linked images in the resulting MSG files.
  • Batch export the messages from several PST files preserving the folder structure.

![](http://dw.maildev.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/docs/images-downloader-job.jpg)

Another alternative would be to save your email messages as PDF files instead. Some advantages:

  • You can view and read the email messages by just clicking on them.
  • The images are visible in the body of the PDF file.
  • MsgExtract can optionally add the headers, email metadata, images and attachments to the PDF file allowing to convert them back to another formats like MSG, EML
  • PDF is a standard format for archiving in general.

You can learn more about MsgExtract at:

http://www.maildev.com/msgextract/

How to download and embed the linked images:

http://docs.maildev.com/article/36-how-do-i-download-and-insert-the-html-linked-images-in-the-resulting-format

(Disclaimer, I am the author of MsgExtract)

1
  • Wow, I believe this is exactly what I am looking for. The functions are straight forward and the interface looks excellent. I will definitely give the demo a go. Thanks and chosen as answer.
    – qwalter
    Sep 24, 2014 at 5:57
0

I don't believe there is a way to do this with Outlook directly (see below for workaround). Some background:

The email sender has the capability to either embed images in the email or link to an external source (it is the sender's choice). It seems that Outlook complies with the choice that the sender has made. This has some pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Disk space is saved because large images aren't stored on your system.
  • Email senders can have 'live' emails that update images based on when they're retrieved. I just saw a cool offer count-down clock due to this capability.
  • Email senders can track image viewing by looking at their server logs.

Cons:

  • Bandwidth is potentially wasted if you download the images more than once.
  • Clearly archiving doesn't work as you've encountered.

Here's a workaround that I found:

  • In Outlook, save the message as foo.htm. This will create foo.htm and a directory foo_files (which has some metadata files, but not the images that you want).
  • Now open foo.htm in Google Chrome and Save As Web Page (Complete) as foo2.htm. This will create foo2.htm and a directory foo2_files which will contain the image files downloaded.
  • So now you can archive foo2.htm and foo2_files for 100% offline viewing.
4
  • Thanks for the reply BIOSCMOS! I'm new to email clients so it's hard to find the details for each format and whether they fit my requirements. I've been finding threads that claim Outlook (specifically 2003 and 2007) was able to do this though, what's up with that? Are those images displaying because they're drawn from a local cache? But someone mentioned being able to share them? This is very confusing. (here's the thread link)
    – qwalter
    Sep 12, 2014 at 22:25
  • Yes this does seem pretty confusing. As @Canadian Luke suggested, I added a (pretty inconvenient) work-around to my answer.
    – BIOSCMOS
    Sep 12, 2014 at 23:07
  • Ah, sorry I should have clarified, another reason I was hoping Outlook would work is because aside from a collection of single messages I also have folders with thousands of emails and .psts would be extremely useful for keeping the folder structure, which is another thing html can't do :( Thanks for the answer though!
    – qwalter
    Sep 13, 2014 at 0:12
  • Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't find a way to do it from Outlook alone.
    – BIOSCMOS
    Sep 13, 2014 at 1:21

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .