How to Read Message Headers in Outlook
Phishing and other email scams are on the rise. One of the best ways to identify scam emails is to examine the email header for detailed information about the sender. Here’s how to do that in Outlook.
Outlook itself provides a basic view of email headers. If that’s not enough, there’s a free add-in that breaks down the headers to give you a more human-friendly view. We’ll cover that as well.
Outlook’s Basic Header View
To get a basic view of the headers for an email, open the email in Outlook and click File > Properties.
In the Properties window that opens, the header is displayed in the “Internet Headers” text box at the bottom.
This text box isn’t very large, so we suggest you select all of the text and copy it into your text editor of choice to make it more visible.
However, the header information is one large block of text, which isn’t that easy to read, especially if you don’t read headers very often. To get a more useful view, there’s a free add-in you can use.