MBOX to PDF

Convert MBOX to PDF takes your .mbox archive and creates a separate searchable PDF for every email it contains. Each PDF includes the full header block, preserves HTML formatting and embeds any inline images, so the content is fully selectable and printable. — only message bodies and inline images are converted; attachments are omitted —

Separate PDF per email with full header block

Each email stored in the uploaded .mbox becomes its own PDF, preserving the original order. The PDF begins with the standard header fields—From, To, Cc, Subject and Date—arranged as in the source; Bcc lines are omitted. When many messages are processed the PDFs are placed in a ZIP archive with sequential names such as “message (1).pdf”, “message (2).pdf”, etc.

Preserved body layout and searchable text

HTML‑rich email bodies retain their visual structure in the resulting PDF. Paragraphs, headings, lists, bold, italic, underline, font colours, tables and inline styles are reproduced, so the PDF looks like the original message. Plain‑text‑only emails are rendered as a single block of text. All text is real PDF text, not an image, allowing selection, copying and full‑text search in any PDF reader.

Inline images embedded and external image handling

Images embedded directly in an email are baked into the corresponding PDF, making each document self‑contained with no external references. For images referenced by an http or https URL the converter attempts to download them while building the PDF, allowing up to two seconds per image and a total of ten seconds for all external images in that message. Images that cannot be retrieved within this budget are simply omitted.

Clickable hyperlinks and attachment handling

Web links and mailto: addresses that appear in the email body remain active clickable hyperlinks in the generated PDF, so recipients can open the target directly from any modern PDF viewer. Binary attachments such as PDFs, ZIPs, or DOCX files are not transferred into the output; the converter focuses on the message content and any inline images, keeping the PDFs lightweight and easy to archive.

Font support and non‑Latin script rendering

The conversion uses a bundled font collection that fully supports Western Latin alphabets and embeds those fonts in each PDF for consistent rendering on any device. When an email contains characters from CJK, Hebrew, Arabic or other scripts not covered by the default set, the tool substitutes a compatible font and embeds it as well, guaranteeing that all glyphs appear correctly regardless of the viewer’s installed fonts.

Limits and scope

Output packaging

Multiple PDFs are delivered in a ZIP; a single‑message archive returns a standalone PDF.

Supported mbox format

Handles the mboxrd dialect used by Thunderbird, KMail and most modern mail clients.