Dave, I’ve really been enjoying learning more about Google’s Gmail system, and have found your Q&A articles invaluable assistance (especially the one about forwarding messages and the one about Gmail phishing notifications) but I’m still a bit puzzled about one thing: how do I see the headers to messages I receive?
While Gmail ostensibly suffers from the same problem of any well-designed interface — that it hides too much information from advanced users in the interest of offering the best possible experience to novices — the good news is that it’s very easy to dig into a given email message and learn more about its headers. Even better, you can easily add the message sender to your contacts list, forward or print the message, and much more, all with one click.
The secret is the tiny little “More options” link that appears adjacent to the time and date that the message was sent on the header line.
Let me show you what I mean, okay?
Turns out that I’m going back and forth with Lexar support about a failing JumpDrive Secure USB keychain drive, and they finally approved my returning the unit for a replacement. A long story, but it just so happens that the message from Lexar is in my Gmail inbox, so here’s how it looks when I view it:
That’ll probably look pretty familiar. But watch what happens when I click on the little “More options” button:
That’s where all the options are hiding in Gmail. Notice that you can reply to the sender, reply to everyone on the recipient list, forward, print, add sender to contacts list, trash this message, report phishing and… the last option… what you asked for: “Show original”. Click on that link and you’ll be shown the exact header of the message, including the Gmail-added header “X-Gmail-Received”.
I think that should address your issue. The moral of this little story? Poke around in Gmail and you’ll be pleased and surprised at the many capabilities are hidden just one or two mouse clicks away.
Could you update these comments about the More Options. I have headers that are appearing in the inbox, but not when I open up the mail. There is nothing available on the more options section. The show original doesn’t work either.
thank you.
I found IP address of another person who mail me,but unable to use that ip,when i paste address on tab it display an error “its private ip address”.
Will u tell me how i access ip of another that gmail account?
Gmail masks the ip address for mails originating from gmail accounts. So even if you get the IP address, its simply of the form 10.x.x.x, which is an ip address of a system of Google’s internal network.
But doesnt mean that the ip address of the sender CANT be found out. There are various methods, but none are fool-proof, and cant pinpoint the location accurately.
In Gmail, I loookd at your suggestion for viewing full headers, but there is no More Options or Hide button anylonger. When I click “show details”, it is just a popup screen and doesn’t remain on the screen. For work I need to print emails and they must show who it’s From, To, Date, Subject, Mailed-by, Signed-by and Sent Time. I sthere a way in setting to permanently keep the full header the way it used to be. If not, how do I print all this? I hope I made myslef clear.
Hey Dave and all other readers,
I think you forgot one important thing about reading e-mail headers in Gmail. Is it possible to see the e-mail headers in Gmail without actually opening the e-mail?
Because I receive quite a lot of spam e-mails every month, I’m almost forced to start reporting all these irritating ‘SP Casino’ and ‘Cheap pills’ mails.
All these good websites that help us fight spam require the original e-mail headers, but ofcourse I don’t want to actually open the spam e-mail. (If you open a spam e-mail, the sender can see that your e-mailadress is active and he most likely starts sending more spam).
Hope you could help me/us out!
Kind regards,
Bram NL
Does anyone know if gmail can or will divulge the real location of someone using gmail?
As it has been said over and over, you cannot identify anyone’s actual location if they are using a gmail account as their IP address is a private one used by gmail, beginning with 10.
If you want to view the IP address in Gmail, you need to click the little triangle next to the ‘Reply’ button on the right-hand side. Once you click on the triangle, choose ‘Show Original’ option and you will need to look for: ‘Received: from’ followed by the IP address between square brackets [ ] (if there are numerous of these, choose the last one).
Hi can any one help me out to find the ip address of gmail or send the steps to find the ips of gmail,google,yahoo
Thanks
vikas sharma
Um, Deon, doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit of an invasion of privacy? I don’t know of any way you can do that without hacking…
Hi
I was wondering whether if I send email from my business email address (ie. myname@domain.com)
to a gmail email address, how do I know if the recipient has viewed / read the email ?
Also how do I track where that person using that gmail address is logging in from to read that email?
How can that be done, especially if the person with that gmail address does not reply to my business email address?
Headers of e-Mail messages from gmail do not show the usual “received from” line at the bottom of the header.
It is my understanding that gmail deliberately suppresses this information “to protect the identity of the sender”. I think we are all entitled to know at least where the e-mail originated. I am immediately suspicious of any e-mail originating in Nigeria or Ghana and think gmail is deliberately hiding the source of spam- and scam-mail. Has anyone found out how to get that information?
Thanks for the long interaction above that makes for very interesting reading! Learnt a lot from this but it still has not been able to solve my problem. I am trying to decipher where a particular email originated from – it is sent from a GMAIL ID and the IP address in “From” verifies this as it is a GMAIL server.
But as mentioned in several replies above, it falls short of telling us from what IP the message was sent to the server in the first place. This is most important for us in the current case as we need to determine where the sender is located.
Any help in this area will be welcomed!
Regards
AMR
Good article. I think gmail have moved the “Show Original” link again tho.
Helped me diagnose why my emails were been seen as spam in Gmail!
c5a5fe4b0911250157u494700e6x1163477789a7d46f@mail.gmail.com
what ip this ?
It seems to suggest that it was sent from AOL and received by Yahoo Mail. Is that where you received the message?