Convert Thunderbird emails to PDF
Thunderbird is one of the friendliest clients for email export — it speaks both useful formats natively. A single message dragged from the message list to your desktop becomes an .eml file. A whole folder, exported with the ImportExportTools NG add-on, becomes an .mbox archive. Both convert here, locally, with full headers.
Thunderbird's own File → Print to PDF exists, but like every client's print path it renders the display view: trimmed headers, no Message-ID, no attachment record. For anything that needs to hold up later — a workplace dispute, a landlord file, a small-claims exhibit — convert the underlying file instead.
For folder-scale jobs, export the folder as .mbox and drop it here: the full version turns it into one chronological PDF with optional Bates numbers and a SHA-256 manifest page documenting each file's hash.
Open the converter — free, no upload
Exporting from Thunderbird
- Single messages: drag from the message list to your desktop → .eml files.
- Whole folders: Add-ons Manager → install "ImportExportTools NG" → right-click folder → Export folder → mbox format.
- Local folders live on disk too: Thunderbird profile → Mail directory contains raw mbox files you can convert directly.
Questions
Is ImportExportTools NG safe to use?
It's a long-standing community add-on for exactly this purpose. But you can skip it: Thunderbird's profile directory already stores each folder as an mbox file you can copy and convert.
Will HTML-formatted emails convert?
Yes. The converter extracts the readable text from HTML bodies into a clean transcript layout. Heavily designed marketing emails render as their text content rather than pixel-perfect layouts — for records and evidence, that's the part that matters.