emailwindows 7windows-explorer
Is there an application or plug-in that allows viewing .eml E-Mail dumps (that may contain HTML and attachments) in Windows 7's preview pane?
I'm aware of the possibility of adding the file type in the registry but that will give only a plain-text view of the files, not a parsed view.
HTML viewing is a must for what I need, attachments are optional.
Is there some top-notch E-Mail client that introduces this functionality?
Is there a generic way of doing this?
You need a Preview Handler for ZIP files, and 7-Zip doesn't provide one. I don't know of any such handler except the one available via the View Data Your Way With Our Managed Preview Handler Framework article on MSDN.
Try it out; it was written for Vista (and Outlook 2007) but should work equally well on Windows 7:
The code download for this article includes a framework that makes it a snap to implement your own preview handlers, and it provides several sample previewers (including previewers for PDF, XML, ZIP, MSI, BIN, CSV, XPS, and XAML files).
Start >> Regedit.exe
Find HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.m3u key and check the 'Default' setting (in my case VLC.m3u)
Find HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VLC.m3u (in this path substitute VLC.m3u with the value of your default setting in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.m3u)
Create a new key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VLC.m3u: shellex
Then in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VLC.m3u\shellex also a new key: {8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}, so it should look like this:
The {8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f} key tells Windows that you want to use a preview handler, now you only should specify which one you want to use.
Set HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VLC.m3u\{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f} Default to this value: {1531d583-8375-4d3f-b5fb-d23bbd169f22} (text handler ID)
If you want to use other handlers in shell you can find their ID's in the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PreviewHandlers
Best Answer
On my Vista x32 the preview of .eml files works fine in Windows Explorer.
In my case, this may be because the .eml file-type is associated with Thunderbird version 2.
If the Preview pane doesn't show for your folder, you will have to customize its type.
If you are using Windows 64-bit and have installed Thunderbird 32-bit, then you should know that you have two versions of Explorer : 32-bit and 64-bit. By default, you use of course the 64-bit version, while Thunderbird 32-bit has installed its handler into the 32-bit version of Explorer. If you cannot find a 64-bit version of Thunderbird, the 32-bit Explorer can be invoked by the following :
If the Thunderbird installation worked correctly, you may find that it can display .eml files.