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Instructions for Displaying an E-mail's Complete Header and Forwarding It for Investigation

 


Any e-mail consists of two parts:

  1. The header, which contain information about the e-mail message, including information about the hops along its travel.  Most e-mail clients hide the headers by default.

  2. The message body itself.

This is what a complete header looks like:
 

-----------------Example Header-----------------
Received: from r02n08.cac.psu.edu (r02a08.cac.psu.edu [146.186.xxx.xxx])
by f03n03.cac.psu.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA112386
for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:27:42 -0400
Received: (from xxxxxx@localhost)
by r02n08.cac.psu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA97614
for xxxxxx@email.psu.edu; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:27:42 -0400
Received: from xxxxx.xxx.psu.edu (xxxxx.xxx.psu.edu [146.186.xxx.xxx])
by r02n08.cac.psu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA196928
for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:27:39 -0400
Received: from xxxxxx.xxx.psu.edu (xxxxx.xxx.psu.edu [146.186.xxx.xxx])
by xxxxx.xxx.psu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8-EMS) with ESMTP id MAA06424
for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:27:39 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:27:39 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@r02n08
From: XXXXXXXXX
X-Sender: xxxxx@xxx.xxx.psu.edu
To: XXXXXXXXX
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
---------------End Example Header---------------
 

This is what a complete header does NOT look like:

------------Example Incomplete Header------------
From: XXXXXXXXX
Sent: Thursday, Jan 8, 2004 5:09 PM
To: xxxxxx@psu.edu
Cc:
Subject:
----------End Example Incomplete Header----------

 


If you do not see your E-mail program listed below,
please contact the Security Webmaster.

Apple Mail Mozilla Mail
Eudora Light Netscape Messenger
Eudora Pro Novell GroupWise
Gmail Opera
Hotmail Penn State Webmail2
Lotus Notes 5 Pine and Elm
Microsoft Outlook 2003 and older Thunderbird
Microsoft Outlook 2007 Yahoo Mail

 


Apple Mail

  1. Select the message

  2. Press the Shift, Apple, and "h" keys simultaneously (the Apple/command key is on either side of the space bar)

  3. Click the forward button or choose forward from the "message" menu

  4.   Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

 

Eudora Light

  1. Open the message

  2. Click the "blah blah blah" button on the message toolbar

  3. Click the Forward button

  4. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

 

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Eudora Pro

  1. Open the message

  2. Click the "blah blah blah" button on the message toolbar

  3. Click the Forward button

  4. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

 

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GMail

  1. Open the message

  2. Look for the Reply button on the right top of the message

  3. Locate the Menu Arrow to the right of the Reply button

  4. Click the Menu Arrow and choose "Show Original" (this will open a new window with the header information)

  5. Right click anywhere in the new window and choose "Select All"

  6. Right click on the highlighted text and choose "Copy"
  7. Choose Compose Mail to create a new message

  8. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and paste copied text into the message body and Send

Hotmail

  1. Click on the "Options" link (located in the upper right hand corner between the Contacts tab and the Help link)

  2. On the Options page that appears, click on the “Mail Display Settings” link on the right hand side of the page under the Additional Options column

  3. On the Mail Display Settings page, change the Message Headers from Basic to Advanced

  4. Click on OK button to save your change to the message headers

  5. Open the message from your mailbox

  6. Highlight the header text and copy it by right-clicking and selecting copy

  7. Click the Forward button to forward the message

  8. Paste the full headers into the body of the forwarded message by right-clicking and selecting Paste

  9. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

 

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Lotus Notes 5

  1. From your Lotus notes inbox, highlight the E-mail in question

  2. Go to the File menu, choose Export, name the file, and leave the Save as type as Structured Text

  3. Click on Export and check "Selected documents" then Click on OK

  4. Open the document using Notepad or Wordpad then copy all of the text

  5. Forward the original message, and paste the copied text ahead of the message body of the forwarded message

  6. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Microsoft Outlook 2003 and older

  1. Open the message

  2. Click on the pull-down menu "View"

  3. Click on "Options"

  4. Header information is in the box labeled "Internet headers"

  5. Copy and Paste ALL header information onto the beginning of the forwarded message

  6. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Microsoft Outlook 2007

  1. Right click on the message in the Table of Contents (list of messages)

  2. In the small menu that appears, left click on "Message Options"

  3. In this new window, header information is in the box labeled "Internet headers"

  4. Copy and Paste ALL header information onto the beginning of the forwarded message

  5. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

Microsoft Outlook Express

  1. Open the message

  2. Click on "File"

  3. Choose "Properties"

  4. Click the "Details" tab

    • Also, if you click on Message Source the body of the message is included with the header information

  5. Copy and Paste ALL header information onto the beginning of the message

  6. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Mozilla Mail

  1. Click on the "View" menu and choose “Message Source”

  2. On the Options page that appears, click on the “Mail Display Settings” link on the right hand side of the page under the Additional Options column

  3. A new window will appear containing the message with full headers

  4. Highlight the header text and copy it by right-clicking and selecting copy

  5. Click the Forward button to forward the message

  6. Paste the full headers into the body of the forwarded message by right-clicking and selecting Paste

  7. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Netscape Messenger

  1. Open the message

  2. Click on the "View" pull-down menu

  3. Choose "Headers"

  4. Choose "All"

  5. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Novell GroupWise

  1. Right-click on the message in the Preview Window

  2. Choose View, then select the MIME Attachment in the upper window. The raw E-mail will now display in the lower window.

  3. Select Edit, then Select All. Select Edit, then Copy.

  4. Open a new E-mail. Paste contents into this new E-mail.

  5. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Opera

  1. In the Inbox, click on the message to preview it, below

  2. In the upper right hand corner of the message, click on the “Display all headers” link. A new window will appear containing the full headers.

  3. Highlight the header text and copy it by right-clicking and selecting copy text

  4. Click the Forward button to forward the message

  5. Paste the full headers into the body of the forwarded message by right-clicking and selecting paste

  6. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Penn State Webmail2

  1. Open the message

  2. In the standard navigation bar across the top of the page, click on "Headers"

  3. Click on "Forward"

  4. Any attachment's filename appears at the top of the new message, below "To:", "From", etc. with a small box with an "X" beside it. Click on that "X" to remove the attachment.

  5. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Pine and Elm

  1. Be sure that you configurations are set to enable full headers (these instructions may be different for elm)

    • Open Pine

    • Go to Setup

    • Choose Config

    • Scroll down to "enable-full-header-cmd" and make sure there is an X by it

  2. Open the message

  3. Press h (the header should be displayed)

  4. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Thunderbird 1.x

Use of Thunderbird 0.9 and older is not recommended. Go to http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/ to download the current version.

  1. Open the message in question (double-click to open in a separate window)

  2. From the View menu select "Headers" then "All"

  3. Click the "Forward" icon

  4. Enter the appropriate e-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

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Yahoo Mail

  1. Open the message

  2. Click on the "Full Headers" link (lower right corner)

  3. Click on the down arrow to the right of "Forward"; choose As Inline Text

  4. Enter the appropriate E-mail address into the "To:" field and Send

 


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Last revised: 2/14/2008