Perfect Guide

An email consists of three vital components: the envelope, the header(s), and the body of the message. The envelope is something that an email user will never see since it is part of the internal process by which an email is routed. The body is the part that we always see as it is the actual content of the message contained in the email. The header(s), the third component of an email, is perhaps a little more difficult to explain, though it is arguably the most interesting part of an email. Header In an e-mail, the body (content text) is always preceded by header lines that identify particular routing information of the message, including the sender, recipient, date and subject. Some headers are mandatory, such as the FROM, TO and DATE headers. Others are optional, but very commonly used, such as SUBJECT and CC. Other headers include the sending time stamps and the receiving time stamps of all mail transfer agents that have received and sent the message. In other words, any time

This page provides instructions on how to find email headers in various email clients and websites. We are working to add as many entries as possible. However, if you cannot find instructions for your email client or you have instructions for an email client not listed here please  contact us so that we can add it/them. Applications Apple Mail 2.x Microsoft Outlook 2003 Mozilla Thunderbird 2.x Websites Google Mail (GMail) Windows Live Hotmail Yahoo Mail Apple Mail 2.x (Mac) Select the message you want to view the headers of. Press SHIFT-COMMAND-H to toggle full headers for the message. (Alternatively you can click VIEW in the menu bar, click MESSAGE, click LONG HEADERS. Microsoft Outlook 2003 (Win) Select the message you want to view the headers of. Right click the mouse, select OPTIONS Headers will be displayed within the "Internet Headers" area of a pop-up window. Mozilla Thunderbird 2.x (Win) Select the message you want to view the headers

In the following steps you'll learn how to find and copy an email header and paste it into the Trace Email Analyzer to get the sender's IP address and track the source. Would you like to track down (or trace) where an email that you received came from? This Trace Email tool can help you do precisely that. It works by examining the header that is a part of the emails you receive to find the IP address. If you read the  IP Lookup page , you'll get a clear idea of what information an IP address can reveal. (A header is the unseen part of every sent and received email. To learn a little bit more on headers,  click here . You can see an example of a header at the end of this article.) What email provider do you use? To find the IP address of a received email you're curious about, open the email and look for the header details. How you find that email's header depends on the email program you use. Do you use Gmail or Yahoo? Hotmail or Outlook? For example, i