MESSAGE Converter

Extract text from Swift Mailer emails (MESSAGE)

Select File
Drop or upload your .MESSAGE file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your MESSAGE file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your MESSAGE file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert MESSAGE to another file type

To convert MESSAGE emails to another format, you need Swift Mailer or other Developer software.

Convert a file to MESSAGE

To convert other file formats to the "Serialized Data" file type, you need software like Swift Mailer or a similar tool.

About MESSAGE files

A .message file is typically a serialized PHP email object generated by the Swift Mailer library (often used within Symfony applications). Unlike standard EML or MSG files, you cannot simply double-click these to open them in Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail.

Users usually encounter these files when a web application saves emails to a disk for logging, spooling, or debugging purposes instead of sending them immediately. The file contains the complete email data - subject, body, headers, and attachments - but it is "frozen" inside a PHP-specific format called serialization. Opening this file in a standard text editor reveals a chaotic mix of readable text and PHP structural data (e.g., O:14:"Swift_Message":...), which is difficult for humans to parse.

Best Conversion Targets:

For Reading: Convert to TXT to view the raw headers and body content using a simple text editor like Notepad++ or VS Code.
For Archiving: Convert the text representation to PDF/A to preserve the log data securely.
For Developers: A PHP script is required to unserialize() the file and export it to a standard EML format for use in email clients.

Convert.Guru analyzes your MESSAGE file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted MSG, EML, DOCX, TXT, PNG, MAIL, ATTACHMENT1, INLINE_IMAGE_CID, PDF, HTML and VOICE files.

FAQ

If you want to convert MESSAGE file to PDF, HTML, VOICE, TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX, ODT, PAGES, TEX, LATEX or MD, you can use Swift Mailer or similar software from the "Serialized Email Object" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert PDF, DOC, ASC, TODO, NFO, MEMO, README, DOCX, JPG, TXT, NOTE or RTF files to MESSAGE, try Swift Mailer or another comparable tool in the "Serialized Email Object" category.

The MESSAGE Converter Story

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 MESSAGE converter.