Q Someone sent me an enormous file, 49 MB in size, of Zipped-up .msg files. How can I access these?

A These are Microsoft Outlook mail messages.

You can read them directly with Microsoft Outlook 2011, part of Office 2011, but that is an expensive solution. Entourage 2008 should also cope fine with them.

Alternatively take a look at Emailchemy, which converts almost all mail formats. Sometimes these messages contain embedded messages themselves, and they can be tricky to open using non-Microsoft tools. You should find that Emailchemy copes fine with those, but if it does encounter such deep nesting of messages that it cannot cope, you will have to revert to an original Microsoft application.

Comments There is a strong chance that most of the enclosed messages contain multiple copies of previous messages. It may be quicker and simpler to ask the person who sent it to you to select just those messages which you really need to read.

Updated from the original, which was first published in MacUser volume 28 issue 10, 2012.