Extract text from saved email messages (EM)
To convert EM emails to another format, you need Microsoft Outlook or other Text software.
To convert other file formats to the "Saved Email Message" file type, you need software like Microsoft Outlook or a similar tool.
A .em file most commonly functions as a Saved Email Message exported from specialized or legacy email systems (including older ENAGE Inc. clients or early G-Mail exports). Functionally identical to the standard EML (RFC 822) format, it stores the email body, headers, sender details, and attachments in plain text. A secondary, rarer use is as an Encore Menu Template created by Adobe Encore, an obsolete DVD and Blu-ray authoring tool. These template files store menu layouts, buttons, and navigation logic for optical discs.
The main disadvantage of the .em format is the lack of native system association. Modern operating systems like Windows 11 and macOS do not automatically link .em files to modern email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. Users are forced to manually force-open the file or rename the extension. In the case of Encore templates, the challenge is worse: the software is End-of-Life (EOL) and the format is closed and proprietary. Standard online converters frequently fail because they cannot process the undocumented Adobe data structure without the original software.
For email archives, your best conversion targets are PDF for legal compliance, long-term archiving, and easy reading. If you simply need it to work as an email again, renaming it to EML or converting it to HTML often resolves the issue. For Encore templates, native conversion is nearly impossible, but the files contain embedded PSD data. Just drag and drop your file to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible on convert.guru. Our analysis can detect the underlying text structure of an email or help you inspect the binary data, letting you recover your content without installing legacy software.
Convert.Guru analyzes your EM file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted EM_, EML, BIN, P65, CEF, PRN, PX, REM, VW, PT and PDF files.
If you want to convert EM file to PX, REM, VW, PT, PDF, TMP, TEMP, CACHE, LOG, BAK, OLD or NEW, you can use Microsoft Outlook or similar software from the "Email Archiving & Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DEVICE, CACHE, SOCK, SYMLINK, PID, MOUNT, FIFO, LOG, PIPE, TMP, JUNCTION or TEMP files to EM, try Microsoft Outlook or another comparable tool in the "Email Archiving & Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our EM converter.