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Univik Online MBOX Viewer
100% private. Runs only on your device
The .mbox that Takeout or Google Vault writes for a group, every thread included, opened in a browser with no client and no upload.
Or pick it from your device. Messages open in this tab, on your own computer, phone or tablet. Your mailbox is never uploaded.
A group is a mailing list, a support queue or a class discussion. Its whole history fits in one mbox once you export it. This page opens that archive in your browser and reads it where it sits, with no mail client and nothing sent to any server.
The tool lists each message with sender, date and subject. Sort newest or oldest first and follow a thread, a conversation in Groups terms, from the first post to the last reply.
Google's own suggestion for an mbox is a mail client. Skip that. A browser is enough to read a group archive of any size here.
A group often holds names and addresses of people who never agreed to be uploaded anywhere. The tool reads the file locally and it never leaves the device.
Save a single message as .eml or download an attachment somebody shared with the group. The message list exports to .csv for a record.
Short answer: unzip the export, open this page on whatever you are using and pick the group's .mbox. Desktop, laptop, tablet or phone, any of them will do.
Extract the Takeout zip, open the Groups folder inside and load the .mbox in Edge, Chrome or Firefox.
Double click the zip and load the .mbox on this page in Safari or Chrome. No need to bring the archive into the Mail app.
Many groups were open source project lists in the first place. Unpack the archive and read it with Firefox or Chromium right there.
Save the .mbox to the Files app or a file manager, open this page and pick it. A small group reads fine on a phone; keep a huge list for a computer.
Groups are a Google product, but a Chromebook still cannot open the export by itself. This tool reads it in Chrome, whether the file sits in Files, on Drive or on a thumb drive.
Google writes a group out as ordinary mail with a few group specific headers. This tool reads all of it, headers included.
Takeout writes a separate mailbox for each group you export, named after the group. Vault does the same for each group in a matter. Open them one at a time or all together.
Google says the export carries archived threads and messages with Groups specific labels. Whatever it wrote, the Headers tab shows it as is, alongside Message-ID, Received and the list headers.
A group can hide member addresses. If it did, the export carries the masked address and the tool shows exactly that, since nothing on this page can or should unmask anyone.
Files that members attached to posts open from the Attachments tab and download singly or as a zip. HTML posts render with inline pictures.
An old developer list or support group can run to gigabytes. The archive is read in pieces, so the browser never has to hold all of it at once.
Exported five groups? Point Select a folder at the extracted Groups folder and each archive loads, and the top bar lets you jump between them.
As a member with download rights, go to takeout.google.com, deselect everything and tick Groups. A Workspace admin with Vault can export the group from a matter instead.
Extract the download. Each group has its own .mbox file named after the group. Skip the .html report beside it.
Drag the .mbox into the upload area, or pick the folder to load several groups together. Click any thread to read it.
There is no API for pulling mail out of a group, so the archive comes from one of a few official routes.
Groups appears in the Takeout product list. Google documents that you can download the data that has not been deleted, including archived threads. In practice large or old groups sometimes come back with an error report saying not everything could be fetched.
If Vault retains Groups messages for the Workspace domain, an admin can search a group inside a matter and export it as mbox. Many organisations use this route because it is the reliable one. See the Google Vault viewer page for the export's metadata files.
A super admin can run the Workspace Data Export tool for whole users. Group mail that reached members' inboxes turns up in their mailboxes rather than as a group archive.
A group without a chosen address takes the group name with hyphens for spaces, such as cube-backup@yourdomain.com. Searching a member's mailbox for that address is another way to rebuild the list from the beginning.
Google Groups also hosts decades of Usenet newsgroups. Those are read only on the website and have no export at all, so an mbox of a Usenet group has to come from another source.
Groups.io is a separate service, and if the owner allows it, its Export Group Data button mails a zip holding the archive in mbox. That file opens here too, as does any mailing list archive saved in mbox by Mailman or a similar host.
One group archive, read anywhere, is what this online page is for. A folder full of group exports opened at once, search through every post's text and printing are jobs for the free Univik MBOX Viewer for Windows.
| Feature | Online Groups Viewer | MBOX Viewer for Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Install needed | None, opens in the browser | 15 MB Windows setup |
| Operating system | Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, iOS, Android | Windows 7 to 11 |
| Files uploaded | Never, runs on your device | Never, runs on your PC |
| Group archives | One folder of groups at a time | Any number, with subfolders |
| Search | Sender, subject, recipients | Message bodies too |
| Large archives | Read in pieces, multi GB files open | No size limit |
| Browser print of the open message | Direct printing | |
| Price | Free | Free |
Unzip the export, find the .mbox named after the group and drop it onto this page. The threads appear in a list and each opens with its attachments. No client, no add-on and no import into anything.
Takeout sometimes reports that it could not fetch all of a group's data, and the .html file in the archive says what failed. Large or very old groups are the usual case. If the domain has Google Vault and it retains Groups, an admin export from a matter is the dependable route.
It depends on the group's settings. Google Groups lets owners and managers control who can see the archive and member addresses, and Takeout only returns what your account is allowed to read. If your export is thin, ask an owner to export it or an admin to use Vault.
Because the group hides member email addresses or your account lacks the permission to view them. Google exports what you were allowed to see. The tool shows the message exactly as it was exported. It cannot reveal an address that Google withheld.
Yes. A collaborative inbox is a group with assignment and resolution states layered on top. The export is still mail, and any state Google wrote into the headers is visible in the Headers tab. The workflow view itself lives only on groups.google.com.
No. That matters more for a group than for your own inbox, because the archive is full of other people's mail. The browser reads the file from your local disk, nothing is sent out and there is no account behind the page. It keeps working offline.
Yes. Groups.io exports a group's messages as mbox inside a zip when the owner has enabled it, and Mailman keeps list archives as mbox on the server. Any of those files opens on this page the same way as a Google Groups archive.
Open each post in the thread and save it as .eml. The files keep the original headers, so the thread order and the replies still line up in any mail program you open them in. The message list export to .csv gives you an index of the whole group.
Every thread the group ever had, readable without Thunderbird and without putting the archive anywhere near a server.
Choose a group archive