View Message Source in Gmail

The e-mail message you see in Gmail is not really what the original e-mail looks like, and it's not what the e-mail program interprets when it receives it. Instead, there's the hidden source code where you can see some additional information not included in the normal message.

The source code for e-mail displays the basic e-mail information, often the HTML code that controls how the message is displayed, meaning you get to know when the message was received, the server that sent it, and more.



You can view the full source code for e-mail only while using the desktop version of Gmail and the Gmail application does not support displaying the original message.

View Message Source in Gmail
- Open the message whose source code you want to know.
- At the top of the email where the subject, sender details and timestamp are located. In addition, there is a reply button. In the upper right hand corner of the message you will find a small, downward arrow. Click on this arrow to see a new list.
- Select Show original from the menu to open a new tab that displays the source code for email.
To download the original message as a text file, you can use the original message download option, or you can choose Copy to Clipboard to copy all the text so that you can paste it anywhere you want.