Venture Domain Hosting Support
All Categories EMAIL What Are Complete Headers? How Do I Get Them?

What Are Complete Headers? How Do I Get Them?

Occasionally, Support may ask you for complete headers. Complete headers are used to trace the path of an email message. The data contained in them is important for troubleshooting purposes.

Most mail clients have special ways of retrieving complete headers. Below are some basic instructions that allow you to retrieve them from a message. If your mail client is not mentioned, refer to the corresponding KB for more information on how to retrieve the headers.

Select your version of mail client or Webmail or check out the headers example:

  • Outlook for Windows

  • Outlook for Mac

  • Outlook Web Access

  • Other mail applications

Outlook for Windows:

  • Outlook 2007

  • Outlook 2010

  • Outlook 2013/2016/2019

Outlook 2007:

Open the message in a separate window and go to Options.

Outlook 2007


Outlook 2010:

Open the message and go to File > Info and click on Properties.

Outlook 2010

Outlook 2013/2016/2019:

Open the message in a new window, go to File > Info and click on Properties:

Outlook 2013/2016/2019


Outlook for Mac:

  • Outlook 2011

  • Outlook 2016

Outlook 2011:

Right-click on the message and go to View Source:

Outlook 2011


Outlook 2016:

Right-click on the message and go to View Source:

Outlook 2016


Outlook Web Access

  • OWA 2010

  • OWA 2013

  • OWA 2016/2019

Outlook Web App 2010

Double-click on the message to open it and click on Message Details on the top menu:

OWA 2010


Outlook Web App 2013:

Open the message in a new window, click on Settings and select View Message Details:

OWA 2013

Outlook Web App 2016/2019: 

Open the message in a new window or highlight it, click on the little arrow located in the top right-hand corner of the message and select View Message Details:

OWA 2016/2019


Other Mail Applications:

  • Mac Mail

  • Outlook Express

  • Thunderbird

  • Entourage

  • RoundCube

  • Horde

Mac Mail:

Open the message and go to View > Message > All Headers or Raw Source:

Mac Mail


Outlook Express:

Open the message and go to File > Properties > Details:

Outlook Express


Thunderbird:

Double-click on the message and go to View > Message Source:

Thunderbird


Entourage:

Select the message and go to Message > Source:

Entourage


RoundCube:

Select the message and choose More Actions and then go to Source:

RoundCube


Horde:

Select the message and go to Headers > Show All Headers:

Horde


What the headers look like:

Complete headers always have more than 5 lines and should have at least one "received" line. They should look something like this:

Received: from mail.somedomain.name ([192.168.182.35]) by mail.yourdomain.name with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5329);
Mon, 19 May 2003 20:58:16 -0700
Received: from SomeGuy (unverified [255.255.255.255]) by mail.somedomain.name (Rockliffe SMTPRA 4.5.6) with SMTP id <B0227914922@mail.somedomain.name> for <you@yourdomain.name>
Mon, 19 May 2003 20:28:12 -0700
Message-ID: <000d01c31e7f$d5f94970$23b693cc@JAB>
Reply-To: "TEST" <testbox@thisisadomain.name>
From: "TEST" <testbox@thisisadomain.name>
To: <you@yourdomain.name>
Subject: test
Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 20:28:09 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000A_01C31E45.2981E060"
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Return-Path: testbox@thisisadomain.name
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 20 May 2003 03:58:16.0450 (UTC) FILETIME=[0AEFA620:01C31E84]

------=_NextPart_000_000A_01C31E45.2981E060
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

------=_NextPart_000_000A_01C31E45.2981E060
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

------=_NextPart_000_000A_01C31E45.2981E060--