Access or import an Outlook 2003 .pst file without Outlook

01
2013-12
  • Nobler

    I have a 450 meg .pst file (MS Outlook 2003 backup file) saved from a PC before it crashed.

    I would like to break it up into its components i.e.

    1. Save attachments to folders on my PC
    2. Paste text-emails into a word processor, etc.

    But I don't want to buy MS Office Professional 2003 or later solely for importing the .pst into MS Outlook 2003+. Outlook Express cannot import .pst files, only Outlook “proper” can.

    Is there some free email client out there, e.g. Thunderbird, that can import .pst files?

    Or is there some other way to access the 450meg file?

  • Answers
  • RSMoser

    Try the free trial version of Office 2010 at

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/

    Once you extract your info you can uninstall the trial.

  • Tom Wijsman

    I'm assuming you're looking to do this programatically... If you're using visual studio, you can install VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) to work with a .pst file... you'll need to have office installed, however you can install the trial version and work with your pst file without having to pay for the full license (just Office itself won't open when the trial runs out)

  • slhck

    Get a trial of Outlook 2010. Get a trial version of Acrobat Pro.

    Connect your old .pst file and export everything to .pdf files (e.g. messages, attachments, et cetera).


  • Related Question

    windows - Can I access Microsoft Outlook PST archives with any other tools?
  • nik

    I would like to access my Microsoft Outlook archives (pst files) from machines that do not have Microsoft Office installed. Is that possible? Think of several years worth of PST archive files.

    My basic criteria for access are as follows (in decreasing order of necessity),

    1. Open the PST file and view individual mails and attachments
    2. Search the mails (as close as I can in Outlook)
    3. Edit: delete mails or attachments
    4. Reorganize: move around mails across folders in the PST or outside to other formats handled by the tool (Say the Thunderbird native formats for example)
    5. Copy-in: move other mails into the PST file (this is stretching a bit far I guess)

    If you know of tools that will work with some version of Outlook PST files, that is fine.

    If you know of tools that are based on Linux rather than Windows, that is fine too.


    Update: Recent Slashdot thread: Microsoft Opening Outlook's PST Format.
    Based on this MSDN interoperability article:
    Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation.

    In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format.


  • Related Answers
  • chills42

    The .PST file is a proprietary format, and AFAIK, can only be used by Microsoft products.

    There are ways to get around this, such as using Thunderbird to open the file and creating a new archive based on the mbox format.

    This initial conversion can only be done on Windows because it uses a built-in mail API to access the information, but once you have converted the archive it should be accessible by most email tools, both on Windows and Linux.

  • Axxmasterr

    There is a tool called EX-Merge that allows you to extract all of the contents of an exchange mailbox. That one is only useful if you have an exchange server to connect to. Another program is a third party conversion utility. It can convert PSTs into a few different formats.

    Transcend Utility for PST

    Download ExMerge Here

  • Community

    libpst is an open source library which can be used to convert a PST file to a collection of mbox files. The latest version now works with the Outlook 2003 format, and it does not require Microsoft Outlook to be installed.

    The readpst program is part of libpst, and is packaged for a number of Linux distributions including Ubuntu, RedHat, and Fedora. There does not appear to be a Windows executable available from the primary libpst site so you might have to compile your own from the source code if you wanted to use it on Windows.

  • Diogo

    The solution lies in using a free tool called Kernel Outlook PST Viewer. I hope it helps.

  • snowdude

    FileLocator Pro from Mythicsoft can read PST files: http://www.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro

    I've used it to read PST files on machines that don't have Outlook (usually to find an important email or contact), although because you have to 'search' for the item you want to read it's not great if you just want to browse.

  • Cheeso

    PST Walker lets you view and export items from a PST file.

    enter image description here

    It does not require Outlook to read a PST file. Costs $49.