Does anyone know of a way to edit the subject, header, and date of a MS Outlook .msg file?

Question

For example, when you drag a message from within MSO to the desktop, it will automatically export it to a .MSG file. Hex-editing does not work because the expected text strings are not encoded IN the file as free text strings... everything seems to be encoded a different way. Just experimenting. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

There are two different .msg formats (at least) and the one Outlook uses is not the standard one as used by normal SMTP clients.

Instead of dragging-and-dropping the message, highlight it in the Outlook view, then click on File, Save As.. and save it as the other available .msg format and see what the difference is.

The other thing you could do is download a simple free SMTP client and run the message through it to see if it changes the format at any stage to something that is more easily read.

As well as the Hex editor, always check what the message looks like in Notepad, so you get an idea of its structure first.