Given discrete subsets Λ j ⊂ R d , j = 1, . . . , q, consider the set of windowed exponentials q j=1 {g j (x)e 2π i λ,x : λ ∈ Λ j } on L 2 (Ω). We show that a necessary and sufficient condition for the windows g j to form a frame of windowed exponentials for L 2 (Ω) with some Λ j is that 0 < m max j∈ J |g j | M almost everywhere on Ω for some subset J of {1, . . . , q}. If Ω is unbounded, we show that there is no frame of windowed exponentials if the Lebesgue measure of Ω is infinite. If Ω is unbounded but of finite measure, we give a simple sufficient condition for the existence of Fourier frames on L 2 (Ω). At the same time, we also construct examples of unbounded sets with finite measure that have no tight exponential frame.