Free online EMLX to TXT converter

Apple Mail stores individual messages as EMLX files, while many editors, scripts, and archive systems accept only plain TXT. Converting removes mail-specific structure so the message can be searched, edited, or shared without requiring Apple Mail.

What the EMLX format is

EMLX is Apple Mail’s format for an individual email message, commonly found in macOS Mail data folders such as ~/Library/Mail/. Each file contains a byte-count line, the message’s RFC 822/MIME source, and usually Apple Mail metadata in a property-list section.

The message source can include headers, plain-text or HTML body parts, MIME boundaries, inline images, and encoded attachments. EMLX files are created and managed primarily by Apple Mail on macOS; they are not intended as a general-purpose document format.

What the TXT format is

TXT is unformatted character data without MIME structure, HTML styling, embedded images, or file attachments. It works with basic editors, command-line tools, full-text indexing systems, archival workflows, and applications that cannot parse email files.

TXT is smaller and easier to process than the original message, but it cannot preserve the complete email structure. A conversion normally keeps readable headers and the body while discarding formatting and binary content.

How to actually convert EMLX to TXT

Use the online converter

1. Open the EMLX-to-TXT converter on 101convert.com.
2. Select the source file, such as message.emlx, from your computer.
3. Choose TXT as the output format and start the conversion.
4. Download the resulting message.txt file and open it in a plain-text editor.

This method requires no software installation and is suitable when you need a readable copy of one or a small number of messages.

Process the message locally with Apple Mail data extraction

For confidential mail or repeatable batch processing, extract the MIME message from the EMLX container before converting it. The first line gives the byte length of the email source; reading that exact number of bytes prevents the trailing Apple property-list metadata from being mistaken for message content.

A local script should parse the extracted bytes with an RFC 822/MIME parser, select the text/plain part, and fall back to the text/html part when no plain-text alternative exists. It can then write the decoded result as UTF-8 to message.txt, optionally adding the Subject, From, and Date headers at the beginning.

Do not simply rename .emlx to .txt. That changes the filename extension but leaves the EMLX byte-count line, MIME headers, encoded content, and Apple metadata in place.

Quality and compatibility limits

• Formatting is lost: fonts, colors, links as styled objects, tables, and HTML layout become plain characters.
• Attachments are not represented as usable files: a TXT output may retain attachment names or MIME remnants, but it cannot contain a functional attachment.
• Multipart messages need selection: choosing the first MIME part may produce an attachment or an HTML fragment instead of the visible message body; a MIME-aware converter should prefer text/plain.
• Character encoding matters: decode the original MIME charset and save the result as UTF-8 to preserve accented and non-Latin characters.
• Metadata is selective: standard headers such as Subject, sender, recipients, and Date can be retained, but Apple Mail flags, labels, mailbox location, and read status are not part of ordinary TXT output.