Export e-mail out of Outlook?....

[frank]

I have been using Outlook for quite a while now and have always exported to
a CVS or Excel file when backing up. It's not bad, but viewing e-mail on a
spreadsheet and losing all the attached files is not the best solution.

Are there any good solutions out there? I have a "Save Mail" folder I'd like
to back up every so often and be able to search and read through it. Even if
it exports all the e-mails into one long document, or PDF, that would be
great. Ideally I would like to save the attachments too but that is less
critical.

I believe Outlook stores in mbox format? So maybe a tool that works with
that. Or with Outlook's archive format. Anyway...just looking for a good way
to export all my emails to a normal readable file..thanks!

Frank

 

[Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]]

Outlook stores its data in a PST file which is not MBox format. About the
only thing that can read it natively is Outlook (and a few other tools).

 

[frank]

There is no way to export out in a readable format except in outlook format?

what are the other tools to read a pst file?

any other options i can try?

I just want to export in a generic format that does not require outlook to
read...

--
http://www.mediaartist.com/
"Media Artist Secrets"
The Blog for Creative Professionals

 

[Herb Martin]

There is no way to export out in a readable format except in outlook
format?

what are the other tools to read a pst file?

any other options i can try?

I just want to export in a generic format that does not require outlook to
read...

There is "a way" -- this may not be suitable for your purposes
but it is free and it does get you the "entire message" as it would
be sent or, was in fact, received through an SMTP server:

Select MORE than one message (there is a way to do one message
but the simplest method is to select the one plus any other and
remove the extra in the next step.)

Ctrl-F to FORWARD the batch of messages to an SMTP server
that uses the format you wish (maildir, mbox, flat files).
Exim (CygWin) is what I use but Mercury will do if you just
want files or later POP/IMAP access to the files.
I have setup a "catch user" for this purpose since I use this
method to forward Spam and misclassified Ham back to my
email server.

When you select more than one file and forward you get a
multi-part MIME message with all of the selected emails
as separate ATTACHMENTS.

You will need to bust this mail on the server if you wish to
deal with each one separately:

The following (very small) Perl program will split the message
into a subdirectory (..\tmp is hardcoded here:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use MIME:arser;
my $parser = new MIME:arser; # Create parser
$parser->output_dir("./tmp"); # Tell it where to output
$parser->extract_nested_messages(0); # Extract messages whole?
$entity = $parser->parse(\*STDIN); # Parse an input filehandle
print "Entity: $entity\n\n" if $entity;

################# That's all ###################

Perl is on most Unix type systems and free for Windows at:

http://www.ActiveState.com

 

[Gordon]

I have been using Outlook for quite a while now and have always
exported to a CVS or Excel file when backing up.

Why? Just make a copy of your pst file. That's all you need to do.

 

[K. Orland]

If you're already using Outlook, I'm not sure why you're hesitant to backup
your mail using your PST file. It's quite simple:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/Howto/backupandrestore.htm
Is there a reason you want to open it using Excel or another application?
--
Kathleen Orland

http://www.howto-outlook.com/

 

[frank]

Kathleen,

Well..lets say I backup all my e-mail in a PST file. I delete all the
e-mails in Outlook, start fresh, compact my pst file down. So 2 months from
now Outlook is filled with new e-mails in my new pst file and I need to go
back and look up an e-mail from the backed up PST file.

What do I do then?

Frank

 

[Gordon]

Kathleen,

Well..lets say I backup all my e-mail in a PST file. I delete all the
e-mails in Outlook, start fresh, compact my pst file down. So 2
months from now Outlook is filled with new e-mails in my new pst file
and I need to go back and look up an e-mail from the backed up PST
file.

What do I do then?

In Outlook File-Open Outlook Data File and open the archive file!

 

[K. Orland]

You can use file/open from Outlook to open the PST, or you can add the PST to
your Outlook pofile from the control panel, mail applet. Go into the
properties of your profile and you can add multiple PST files from there. You
may want to give your PST's different names if you have multiples. such as
frank083005 (your name and the date) for example.
Does this make sense?
--
Kathleen Orland

http://www.howto-outlook.com/

 

[frank]

so you can have multiple pst files open in outlook? I assumed if i loaded
one it would replace the current.

 

[Brian Tillman]

so you can have multiple pst files open in outlook? I assumed if i
loaded one it would replace the current.

You can have as many open as you like.

 

[Eric Fookes]

There are several advantages to backing-up Outlook mail in a non-proprietary
format, especially if you need to keep your archives for several years.
Archiving PST files means you are totally dependent on a working version of
MS Outlook to read their contents. Are you sure that in 5 or 10 years time
you will still be using Outlook? If so, will that version still be able to
read your old PST files?

We've developed a tool called Aid4Mail that can save your Outlook messages
directly into highly compressed ZIP files, a format natively supported by
Windows XP. Attachments are stored in a separate folder within the ZIP
files, allowing easy extraction, and mail folders are stored in a
non-proprietary mailbox format (mbox) that most mail clients can read,
guaranteeing compatibility with future systems.

In one of our tests, the PST file was 1.05 GB. When this file was copied to
a ZIP file using traditional methods with highest compression, the resulting
file archive was 829 MB. When that same PST file was archived with Aid4Mail,
the resulting ZIP file with all messages and attachments was only 314 MB
large.

If you really want to export to Excel, Aid4Mail can do that too. The big
difference compared to the Outlook approach is that a simple click on a link
lets you view a message in Internet Explorer with full access to
attachments.

You'll find more information about Aid4Mail and a download link on the
following Web site:

http://www.aid4mail.com/

 

[Brian Tillman]

There are several advantages to backing-up Outlook mail in a
non-proprietary format, especially if you need to keep your archives
for several years. Archiving PST files means you are totally
dependent on a working version of MS Outlook to read their contents.
Are you sure that in 5 or 10 years time you will still be using
Outlook?

I'm not even sure I'll be alive in 5-10 years. However, this is a fairly
specious argument when it comes to computer technology. In 5-10 years, I
believe there's a significant chance that NO backup format used today will
be viable in 5-10 years. I think there's a likely chance that current disk
technology itself will be obsolete in that time frame, so that even plain
text files used today will be unreadable then.

 

[Eric Fookes]

I don't agree. Plain text files (ASCII) as we know them have been around for
about 40 years. Your suggestion that the format may be unreadable in 5-10
years time is very, very unlikely. The great thing about text files is that
they are not a proprietary format and can be read with a multitude of
programs under Windows, Mac, Unix. ZIP files, which we use to create compact
archives, use a published format that has been around for over 15 years and
can also be opened with a multitude of programs under different OS's. I'm
fairly certain we'll still be able to read those in 5-10 years time. CD-ROMs
have been around for about 25 years and I'm also confident that we will
still be able to read them in 5-10 years time.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I don't agree. Plain text files (ASCII) as we know them have been
around for about 40 years. Your suggestion that the format may be
unreadable in 5-10 years time is very, very unlikely.

I didn't say plain text would be out of vogue (although that may be coming),
but that no matter what medium you've used to record them, that medium will
be obsolete.