Outlook View Headers: Find Full Email Headers in Every Version

To view headers in Outlook, open the message and use More actions (…) > View > View message details in Outlook on the web and new Outlook for Windows, or File > Properties (look in the Internet headers box) in classic Outlook for Windows. On a Mac, Control-click the message and choose View Source.

Below are step-by-step instructions for each version, what to do when the menu doesn’t match, and how to actually make sense of the wall of text you get. Menu names in Outlook change fairly often, so treat this as accurate as of November 2026 and expect small label differences in your build.

Why you’d want to see email headers

Every email carries a block of technical metadata above the message you read. According to Practical365, header information shows the route the message took, who sent it, who it was addressed to, and whether it was scanned for spam or viruses.

That makes headers useful when you need to:

• Check whether a suspicious message really came from the sender it claims to be from.
• Work out why a message arrived late (each server hop is timestamped).
• Give your IT team or email provider the evidence they need to troubleshoot delivery or spam-filtering problems.

Microsoft’s own support article notes that most of the time only an administrator needs to view internet headers. In practice, the most common reason a regular user does it is that IT asked them to.

How to view headers in each version of Outlook

Outlook on the web and Outlook.com

1. Open the message.
2. Select More actions (the three dots) at the top of the message.
3. Choose View, then View message details.
4. A window opens with the full header text. Select all of it and copy it if you need to share it.

This path is described in Microsoft’s support article and echoed by university IT guides such as UW-Madison’s knowledge base.

New Outlook for Windows

New Outlook is built on the same code as Outlook on the web, so the steps are usually the same:

1. Open or select the message.
2. Select More actions (…).
3. Go to View and choose View message details.

Sources don’t fully agree here. Some guides and Microsoft Q&A posts describe the option as View message source rather than View message details, and at least one user reported that only View message source appeared in their build. If you don’t see one, look for the other; both show the raw headers. The classic File > Properties route does not exist in new Outlook.

Classic Outlook for Windows

1. Double-click the message so it opens in its own window (not the Reading Pane).
2. Click File > Properties.
3. The headers appear in the Internet headers box at the bottom of the dialog.
4. Click inside the box, press Ctrl+A to select everything, then Ctrl+C to copy.

The box is small, so pasting the contents into Notepad makes them much easier to read.

Outlook for Mac

1. Control-click (or right-click) the message in the message list.
2. Choose View Source.

Microsoft announced View Source for the new Outlook for Mac on its Microsoft 365 Insider blog, initially for Beta Channel users. The legacy Outlook for Mac used the same Control-click path. The source view includes the headers followed by the message body.

Outlook for iOS and Android

There’s no well-documented, official header view in the Outlook mobile apps, and several university IT guides say mobile clients often give limited or no access to full headers. The dependable workaround is to sign in to Outlook on the web in a browser and follow the web steps above.

Quick reference

How to read Outlook email headers

Raw headers look intimidating, but you only need a handful of fields for most questions.

Read the Received lines from the bottom up

Each server that handled the message adds a Received line at the top of the header block. That means the oldest hop is at the bottom. Practical365 recommends starting at the bottom and reading upwards, and describes each line as generally taking the form “from servername (IP address) by servername (IP address) with MTA-name; timestamp.”

Comparing timestamps between hops shows where a delay happened. Watch for time zones: different servers may stamp times in different zones, which is a common source of confusion.

Check authentication results

The Authentication-Results header records the outcome of SPF, DKIM and DMARC checks performed by the receiving system. These checks help confirm whether the sending server was allowed to send for that domain and whether the message was altered in transit. A fail result on a message that claims to come from your bank or your own company is a strong reason to be suspicious.

Compare the sender fields

The From address is what Outlook displays, but it’s easy to forge. Compare it with Return-Path and the domains in the Received lines. A mismatch isn’t always malicious (newsletters and ticketing systems often send on behalf of others), but combined with failed authentication it’s a classic spoofing pattern.

Microsoft-specific fields

Messages that pass through Microsoft 365 often include headers starting with X-MS-Exchange or X-Forefront, which carry the service’s own filtering verdicts. Their meanings are detailed in Microsoft’s Exchange documentation; we couldn’t verify a complete field-by-field reference for this guide, so check Microsoft’s docs before drawing conclusions from them.

Let Microsoft’s Message Header Analyzer do the parsing

Instead of reading headers by eye, you can paste them into Microsoft’s Message Header Analyzer, part of the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer. The Microsoft Learn page describes the tool, and Practical365 explains the workflow: paste the headers into the field and select Analyze headers to get a readable report, including the hops in order and the delay at each one.

There’s also an Outlook add-in version. Microsoft’s MHA project on GitHub explains that:

• The add-in runs against a selected message in supported Outlook clients, so you don’t have to copy anything.
• Microsoft 365 admins can deploy it to users from the admin center by searching the store for “Message Header Analyzer”.
• It requests the ReadWriteMailbox permission so it can read the message’s transport headers.

The same project hosts a standalone web version, linked from the GitHub page. Whichever you use, stick with the official Microsoft tools; pasting headers into random “free analyzer” sites shares your routing data with a third party.

Troubleshooting common problems

The menu option isn’t there. In new Outlook and on the web, Microsoft rolls out interface changes gradually, so your labels may differ from a colleague’s. Check under More actions for both View message details and View message source.

The Internet headers box is empty in classic Outlook. This typically happens with messages you sent yourself or drafts, since they never travelled across the internet to you. Try a message you received from an external sender.

IT asked you to send headers. Copy the full text exactly as shown, and paste it into a reply or ticket. Don’t forward the suspicious email as an attachment unless your IT team asks for that specifically; many organizations have a dedicated reporting button or process.

The bottom line

Viewing headers in Outlook takes three clicks once you know where to look: More actions > View > View message details on the web and in new Outlook, File > Properties in classic Outlook, and View Source on a Mac. For anything beyond a quick check, paste the result into Microsoft’s Message Header Analyzer and let it lay out the route and authentication results for you.