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The ability to view full headers in Windows Live Hotmail is on the Actions menu when viewing a message.

I have the Windows Live version of Hotmail. What do I need to do to make the complete headers show when i receive emails?

For the longest time, it didn't seem like this was even possible.

Fortunately, with recent updates to Windows Live Hotmail you can view additional headers as well as the complete message source - both of which can be interesting and valuable.

I'll show you how.

Here's an example of a message with default settings:

A Message Displayed in Windows Live Hotmail

Note the Actions menu link on the right. Click on that and you'll see several options: (Note: several people, myself included, are now seeing a "Reply" link there. Click on the small triangle to its right - it works just the same.)

Hotmail message actions dropdown menu

Click on Show Details to get the expanded header that some refer to as the "Full Header":

Hotmail message showing 'details'

In Actions, click on View message source to view the actual raw message. This actually opens as a separate window or tab in your browser (email addresses obfuscated in the copy below, and some additional line breaks added to make it fit the page better):

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTA7YT0xO0Q9MTtTQ0w9Mw==
X-Message-Status: n:0
X-SID-PRA: Leo A. Notenboom 
X-AUTH-Result: NONE
X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jFm1I23U2ig9+JDLhKPgj97yA2JzV/HHy/wXpHjoh
   bzHOXYTNCM6Rr5LrS9m96Tfk2iq3I9D9xkxXcXsVueqKvOKMC4NMH5DAc=
Received: from rs3.pugetsoundsoftware.com ([72.32.63.173]) by 
   bay0-mc3-f22.Bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
	 Wed, 4 Aug 2010 15:33:36 -0700
Received: (qmail 28430 invoked from network); 4 Aug 2010 17:33:36 -0500
Received: from h-64-105-215-204.sttnwaho.static.covad.net
  (HELO ?192.168.1.154?) (64.105.215.204)
  by secure3.pugetsoundsoftware.com with (DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encrypted) SMTP;
  4 Aug 2010 17:33:36 -0500
Message-ID: <4C59EABE.1090504@******.***>
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:33:34 -0700
From: "Leo A. Notenboom" 
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11)
  Gecko/20100711 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.6
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Leo Notenboom <******@hotmail.com>
Subject: This is a test message for full header display.
X-Enigmail-Version: 1.0.1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Return-Path: leo@******.***
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 04 Aug 2010 22:33:37.0005 (UTC) FILETIME=[1459B9D0:01CB3425]

Hello Ask Leo! readers!

Leo

That includes not only the message, but what are truly the complete and full email message headers that are often used for mail trouble diagnosis.

(This is an update to an article originally published September 6, 2007.)

Article C3141 - August 4, 2010 « »

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Leo Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed. After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.

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Recent Comments
72 Comments
Selina
September 7, 2010 6:57 PM

I came acroos this advice on another forum regarding viewing headers in Hotmail and this is what the poster recommended:

Windows Live headers - a workaround.
"Ok, so we all know how hard it's been to get headers off an email if you have Windows Live lately. I've come up with a handy little workaround to let everyone see the headers. It's so simple I don't know why we didn't think of it before. All you do is get Mozilla Thunderbird to open it. Here's how you set it up.

Open up TB, click on Tools, then Account Settings. A new window pops up.
Bottom left hand corner, you see Account Actions. Click it and then click on Add Mail Account.
Put in yout name, email address and the email password, then click on Continue.
Click on Create Account.
Now you can download emails sent to the Windows Live account.

To find the headers, open your email, hold down the Ctrl key and (while still holding it down) press U. Up pops a window with the headers."

You dont have to do the above step if TB vesion is 3.1.2. Just look for the other actions the the top right hand corner of the e-mail message and click on that and then View source.

prakash
October 25, 2010 10:27 PM

when clicked on view message source, it is opening new tab, which is showing a junk characters which is not readable, please help me in this regard

TJ
December 8, 2010 12:36 PM

By the email header is possible to get to the user agent string of the sender?
I mean, by any chance, the recipient can in some way to get to know info. about the browser, OS, Gecko from the sender?
I need to know that.
Please, repli this message with a simple and short answer. Thanks!

No.
Leo
09-Dec-2010

tarig
May 8, 2011 10:30 AM

how can i view character set on massage to change language

John B
June 5, 2012 9:59 PM

Thank you for the expert help. Simply and clearly put - perfect for a technoklutz such as myself! Brilliant!