Why do EML or MSG email attachments downloaded from ticket comments appear corrupted or display incorrectly in Outlook?

Question

Why do EML or MSG email attachments downloaded from ticket comments appear corrupted or display incorrectly in Outlook?

Answer

Agents may notice that email file attachments such as EML or MSG added to Zendesk ticket comments appear corrupted or display unusual formatting when opened in Microsoft Outlook. These files might show unexpected characters or altered layouts. For example, letters may be replaced with symbols such as an uppercase A appearing as an equal sign, the message formatting may appear broken, or raw HTML and CSS styling code may be visible in the message body.

This behaviour occurs because of how Zendesk processes and stores email file attachments for download. Zendesk preserves the original file content using standards-compliant encoding and stores line breaks using the LF format, which most email clients support. However, Microsoft Outlook expects EML and MSG files to use the CRLF format for line breaks. This difference can cause Outlook to misread the file, resulting in altered characters or broken formatting. Other email clients such as Apple Mail and Thunderbird are not affected and display the same files correctly.

To avoid formatting issues in Outlook, follow these steps:

1. In the Zendesk ticket, find the comment that includes the email attachment, then select the View original email option to access the source of the incoming message.
2. Click the Source tab, then click download source to download the original email.
   
3. Open the downloaded source email file in Outlook. From there, access and download the original EML or MSG attachment. The file should now display correctly without any formatting issues.