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The email attachments being sent by Outlook into ServiceNow are being renamed to message.eml.

sameekshasa
Tera Contributor

The email attachments being sent by Outlook into ServiceNow are being renamed by ServiceNow to message.eml. Please assist to fix how ServiceNow is ingesting the email attachment so that it has the same subject title of the email. 

4 REPLIES 4

Naveen20
ServiceNow Employee

This is a well-known ServiceNow behavior. When Outlook forwards or attaches an email as a .eml file, the MIME Content-Disposition header often just says filename="message.eml", and ServiceNow uses that generic name as-is during ingestion.

The fix is to create an After Insert Business Rule on sys_attachment that detects .eml attachments, reads the raw content to extract the Subject: header, and renames the attachment accordingly.

Tanushree Maiti
Tera Patron

Hi @sameekshasa 

 

  • MSG is a format supported only by Microsoft Outlook. These files cannot be created, opened, and saved in other email clients.
  • EML files can be opened in almost any email application. Most email clients save individual messages in this format.

Refer: https://www.outlookfreeware.com/en/blog/post-1040#:~:text=MSG%20is%20a%20format%20supported,individu....

 

Please Accept the solution if it assisted you with your question & Mark this response as Helpful.
Regards
Tanushree Maiti
ServiceNow Technical Architect
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanushreemaiti

helpemailtales
Tera Contributor

This feels much more like a ServiceNow email passing issue rather than on Outlook one. ServiceNow is probably considering the whole e-mail to be an. Eml attachment, so you're likely going to have to reconfigure inbound action and/or attachments.

robertwilliam
Kilo Contributor

From what you've described, it sounds like ServiceNow is processing the incoming Outlook email as an embedded .eml message, which is why the attachment is being renamed to message.eml instead of retaining the original subject or filename.

 

I would first verify the following:

  • Check your Inbound Email Actions and any custom scripts that handle email attachments.
    Review whether Exchange or Microsoft 365 is converting Outlook messages before they reach ServiceNow.
  • Confirm whether the email is being forwarded as an attachment (.msg) or already arrives as an .eml file.
  • Look for any Business Rules or Flow Designer actions that may be renaming attachments during ingestion.   
                                                                                                                                                                                     
    If your workflow requires preserving the original email subject and metadata, you could also preprocess the Outlook emails before importing them into ServiceNow. For example, the BitRecover PST Converter Wizard can export emails from PST files while preserving properties such as the email subject, sender, timestamps, and attachment information. This often makes it easier for downstream applications to retain meaningful filenames instead of assigning a generic name like message.eml.

If you can share your ServiceNow version and whether the emails originate from Outlook desktop, Exchange, or Microsoft 365, it would help determine whether this is an inbound email configuration issue or a limitation of how the message is being parsed.