Mbox

email

MBOX is a commonly used format for storing email messages. MBOX files may be produced by a variety of email clients, however these are often not mutually compatible. MBOX databases typically contain a linear sequence of electronic mail messages. Each message begins with a separator line that identifies the message sender, and also identifies the date and time at which the message was received by the final recipient (either the last-hop system in the transfer path, or the system which serves as the recipient's mailstore). Each message is typically terminated by an empty line. The end of the database is usually recognized by either the absence of any additional data, or by the presence of an explicit end-of-file marker. Attachments within MBOX files are typically base 64 encoded, allowing binary data to be transferred over media designed to deal with textual data. Due to the variety of MBOX structures, it is not currently possible to produce an authoritative signature for the format.

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• ePADD softwareOpen sourcereads and writes · Apache Software License 2.0
• AlpineOpen sourcereads · Apache Software License 2.0
• Apache TikaOpen sourcereads · Apache Software License 2.0
• DovecotOpen sourcereads · GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 / MIT License
• KMailOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License
• MuttOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later
• neomuttOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 2.0
• Emailchemywrites
• mpopwrites
• Aid4Mailreads
• Archivematicareads
• Becky!reads
• DArcMailreads
• Forensic Toolkitreads
• Scribe Mailreads

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Sources

• File Formats Wiki
• PRONOM fmt/720
• Wikidata Q285972

From Just Solve the File Format Problem (File Formats Wiki), PRONOM, Wikidata. Updated 2026-10-24.

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