Convert to PDF guide
Save an Email as a PDF for Your Records
Updated
Short answer: Download the message as an .eml file from your mail app, drop it into Email to PDF, and keep the PDF with the From, To, Date and Subject printed at the top.
A confirmation, an agreement made by email, a complaint thread you may need later: printing to PDF from a mail app often loses the headers or adds clutter. Converting the original message file gives a clean, dated record.
Step by step
Step 1: Save the message as .eml. Gmail: open it, use the ⋮ menu and choose Download message. Apple Mail: drag the message to the desktop. Thunderbird: File → Save As → File.
Step 2: Open Email to PDF and drop the .eml file.
Open Email to PDF(runs on our server)Step 3: Download the PDF and check the header block: From, To, Cc, Date and Subject.
Step 4: Save attachments separately from your mail app and convert them if needed, then merge everything into one record.
Open Merge PDF(runs on your device)Step 5: For long-term archiving, convert the final file to PDF/A.
Open PDF to PDF/A(runs on our server)
Why this works, and what to watch for
An .eml file is the email exactly as it travelled: headers, the plain-text and HTML versions of the body, and any attachments, in a standard format any mail app can read. Email to PDF reads that file and lays out a page with a header table at the top, then the message body. Because it works from the original message rather than a screen, nothing your mail app adds, such as buttons, ads or the conversation sidebar, ends up in the record.
Attachments are listed at the end by name and size, so the record shows what was sent, but their contents aren't converted. That's deliberate: an attachment could be anything, from a spreadsheet to a ZIP. Save them from your mail app, convert the ones you need, and combine them with Merge PDF.
For privacy, images that the email loads from other websites aren't fetched. Marketing emails use these remote images for logos and also for tracking pixels, which tell the sender when and where a message was opened. Your record won't trigger them; it will show blank spaces where remote images were. Images embedded in the message itself are kept.
Outlook needs a note. The Windows desktop app saves messages as .msg, a Microsoft-specific format that isn't supported yet. Outlook on the web and the new Outlook app can download a message as .eml from the message's menu; forwarding the message to a Gmail account and downloading it there also works.
A PDF of an email is a convenient record, not proof of authenticity by itself. If an email might matter in a dispute, keep the original .eml too: it contains the full routing headers that show which servers handled it.