Viewing A Windows Live Mail Message Subject Field in Vista and Windows 7 using Windows Explorer

Summary:

• Windows Live Mail stores Email and News messages on a pc in a viewable text file format.
• Email messages use the file type extension ‘eml’; News messages use ‘nws’
• Both Email and News messages use a hyphenated numerical/hexadecimal format as the filename
  • Two examples for Mail are 00294823-00000147.eml and 26A6701F-00000002.eml
  • Two examples for News are 0FDD08FE-0003DBFF.nws or 63F86350-0003DB89.nws
• Neither of the above filenames by default show the message’s ‘Subject’ or ‘Title’ field when viewed in Windows Explorer

Recommendation:

• If using Windows Vista or Windows 7, the ‘Subject’ field can be enabled in Windows Explorer

Instructions:

1. To add the ‘Subject’ (or ‘Title’ field via the Windows Explorer menu)
2. Open Windows Explorer
3. Navigate to the Windows Live Mail folder containing the respective account’s message(s)
4. The default location for your mail and news folders in Windows Live Mail is:
   • C:\Users\<your Windows logon id>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\<your email or newsgroup account name>
5. Click on ‘View’ on the Explorer menu or press Alt V
6. Scroll and select ‘Choose Details’
7. Scroll and select ‘Subject’ and/or ‘Title’ (see Note below for additional available fields)
8. Click ‘Ok’

Note:

• Applicable to all released versions of Windows Live Mail (2011, 2009, 2008)
• Other fields in addition to ‘Subject’ are available (e.g. To Address, From Address etc) when configuring the ‘Choose Details’ option in Vista’s Windows Explorer
• This procedure is also applicable to Vista’s Windows Mail for mail and news messages
  • Vista’s Windows Mail default location for your ‘mail’ folders is:
  •  —>  C:\Users\<your Windows logon id>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Local Folders
  • Vista’s Windows Mail default location for your ‘news’ folders is:
  • —>   C:\Users\<your Windows logon id>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\<newsgroup name>

Revisions:

Sept 15, 2008: Original Published Date

Oct 26, 2008: Added ‘Note:’ section on other available fields and applicability to Vista’s Windows Mail messages

Feb 16, 2010: Republished as new entry to reflect applicability to Windows 7

Mar 11, 2010: Corrected spelling

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Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, How-To, Windows Live, Mail, News, customization, Vista, Windows 7