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Open a PEC Attachment

A certified email arrives as a postacert.eml holding another message, whose attachment is often a .p7m holding the document you actually need. Drop the file once: the message is opened, the signed attachment is taken out of it and the document inside is extracted, without a single download in between.

01/ 02EML Viewer
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Your files never leave your device. This tool even works offline.

EML

01 / Fast steps

  1. Drop the postacert.eml you received, or the whole PEC message saved as .eml.
  2. Both steps run one after the other in your browser, and each one shows what it produced.
  3. Download the document. The intermediate files stay available on their own step.

02 / Best for

  • Read a contract or a deed that arrived through a certified mailbox, without installing signature software.
  • Recover the attachment of a PEC message when the webmail only offers you the postacert.eml.
  • Open a certified email on a machine where nothing can be installed.
  • Get at a signed attachment your mail client shows but refuses to save on its own.

03 / Why here

  • One drop instead of four actions: nothing is downloaded and loaded again between the two steps, because the file never leaves the memory of your tab.
  • Every step is visible, and each one keeps its own files: if the second step cannot open the envelope you still have the attachment the first one recovered.
  • A step that has nothing to do says so instead of failing. A PEC message whose attachment is a plain PDF simply skips the signature step.
  • The same tools that run here have their own pages, so nothing here is a black box: each step names the tool that carried it out.
  • Certified mail carries contracts and legal records, and none of it is uploaded: both steps run on the engines already in your browser.

04 / Keep in mind

  • This extracts documents, it does not verify signatures. Use an accredited validation service if you need legal proof that a signature is valid.
  • A detached signature keeps the document outside the envelope, so there is nothing inside to extract and the second step says so.
  • Some providers nest the certified message differently. If the first step finds no attachment, open the .eml on its own page to see what it actually contains.

Tool connections

Related tools

Just converted a file here? Click a tool that reads it and your new file is handed over automatically, no re-upload needed.

Good to know

Questions & answers

01

What is postacert.eml?

It is the envelope the certified mail system builds around your message. A PEC provider does not deliver the original email to you directly: it wraps it, together with its attachments and the delivery receipts, inside a new message, and that inner original travels as an attachment called postacert.eml. So the file you are looking at is a complete email in itself, which is why a normal double click either opens it in the wrong program or shows you a message with no attachments. What you want is inside it.

02

Why is the attachment a .p7m and not a PDF?

Because it was digitally signed. A .p7m is a PKCS#7 or CAdES envelope that holds three things: the original document, one or more signatures and the signing certificates. The name usually reads contract.pdf.p7m, where the .pdf is the real document and the .p7m is the signature wrapper around it, which is exactly why people expect a PDF reader to open it and it does not. The envelope has to be unwrapped first, and that is the second step of this page.

03

Why does opening a PEC attachment normally take four steps?

Because each tool works on files, and files live on disk. You download the postacert.eml, open it somewhere to save the .p7m, download that, then load it into something that unwraps signatures. Two of those four actions exist only to move bytes between two programs. Here both tools run in the same browser tab, so the output of the first is already in memory when the second starts: you drop once and download once.

04

Are the files uploaded anywhere?

No. Both steps run in your browser on engines it already has, and the intermediate file is never written anywhere either: it is passed from one step to the next inside the page. This matters more here than almost anywhere else on the site, because certified mail is where contracts, deeds and legal notices arrive.

05

What happens if a step fails?

The chain stops there and everything the earlier steps produced stays available on its own step, ready to download. That is the point of showing the steps at all: if the signature envelope turns out to be damaged, you still walk away with the attachment the first step recovered, instead of starting over with nothing.

06

The attachment inside is an XML, not a PDF. Is that wrong?

No, it is what was signed. An Italian e-invoice is signed as XML, so an envelope named fattura.xml.p7m never held a PDF at all: that XML is the legal original. To read it as a document, use the e-invoice page, which renders it into a PDF you can actually look at. E-Invoice PDF

07

Can I open the postacert.eml without this page?

Yes, with a desktop mail client that lets you save attachments out of an attached message, plus signature software for the .p7m. That is the four-step route, and it needs both programs installed. This page exists because the two operations are the same two operations every time, and a browser can do both.

08

Is opening a PEC attachment free here?

Yes, completely free, with no sign-up and no file size limits. Both steps run on your own hardware, which is also why there is nothing to pay for.