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export emails from PST file in Outlook 2010 to Thunderbird

I will start by describing the problem..

I had an email account configured in Outlook 2010 connected to an Exchange server. I backed up my emails locally into a PST file. (now I no longer have access to the Exchange account)

Next I wanted to export these archived mails to be used inside Thunderbird 10.x (place them in the Local Folders in TB). The PST file is around 500MB in size.

I tried different methods:

• My first attempt was to use the Import > Mail > Outlook feature directly from inside TB as suggested here.
• In another attempt, I "copied" my emails (drag-drop) to a third common IMAP email configured in both Outlook and Thunderbird (which is in fact a locally running mail server on the 127.0.0.1 interface), then I pulled them into my local folder once inside TB.
• I even tried to use Outlook Express as an intermediary step (Outlook -> Outlook Express -> Thunderbird).

All the above fails, as the emails are not preserved when exported. I have encountered a number of problems, to name a few:

• if we have Content-Type: multipart/alternative; emails with both html/text formats, then only the html one is exported.
• different encodings are sometimes used than the original ones (base64, quoted-printable, etc..)
• the history of routes (Received: headers) is completely gone
• the addresses are sometimes lost and simply the display name is kept. ex: To: "First Last" <nick@server.com> gets transformed into: To: "First Last"
• sometimes the whole sender/receiver address is lost, and simply duplicated from the opposite field
• the date field timezone gets changed to the current machine's timezone (not a biggie)
• all sorts of other headers are added/removed/rewritten differently...

So my question is how can I export emails from my PST file into Thunderbird's EML/MBOX textual format, in a clean way the preserves all the original headers?

I understand that the specification of PST files is now publicly available (right?), so I'm hoping someone developed a decent tool for this task.. The way I see it, if we somehow had access to the raw emails in Outlook (like view-source in TB), it shouldn't be hard to simply write them to text files!!

BTW: In Outlook Express we could directly choose File > Save As and export in .eml format, but Outlook 2010 only have the (proprietary?) binary .msg format option (or am I missing something)...

Here's a sample to show how the emails get mangled -- names and other stuff have been changed to protect the innocent :)

Original email in Outlook (open email in new window, go to File > Properties and inspect the 'Internet headers' text field, although sometimes its just blank!)

Received: from mail.server (192.168.2.1)
 by s2.server (192.168.5.1) with Microsoft SMTP Server id 14.0.702.0; 
 Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:26 -0500
Received: from mail.server (mail.server [192.168.6.1])
 by mail.server (8.14.5.Beta0/8.14.5.Beta0) with ESMTP id p00000000000002;
 Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:26 -0500
Received: from smtp.server (smtp.server [192.168.4.1])
 by mail.server (8.14.5.Beta0/8.14.5.Beta0) with ESMTP id p00000000000001
 for <list@server>; Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:16 -0500
Received: from s3.server (s4.server [192.168.3.1])
 by smtp.server (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id p0000000000000
 for <list@server>; Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:16 -0500 (envelope-from sender@server)
Received: from s1.server ([ffff::0000:000:0000:0000])
 by s3.server ([ffff::1111:000:0000:0000%12]) with mapi; 
 Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:15 -0500
From: sender@server
Subject: test
Thread-Topic: test
Thread-Index: A0000000011112222333344445555g==
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:15 -0500
Message-ID: <99887766554433221100FFEEDDCCBBAA99887766@s1.server>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Return-Path: list-request@server
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AuthSource: s2.server
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AuthAs: Anonymous
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AVStamp-Mailbox: MSFTFF;1;0;0 0 0
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SCL: -1

Imported email into Thunderbird (simply Ctrl+U to view source)

From: sender@server
Subject: test
Thread-Index: A9999888877776666555544443333g==
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:51:15 -0500
Message-ID: <99887766554433221100FFEEDDCCBBAA99887766@s1.server>
acceptlanguage: en-US
Content-Language: en-us
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: sender@server
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0
x-ms-exchange-organization-authsource: s2.server
x-ms-exchange-organization-authas: Anonymous
X-OlkEid: 00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF00112233

importing a outlook.pst file into thunderbird

trying to import my outlook.pst into thunderbird, but it seems my computer has to have outlook running on the computer to do this import.

I have the outlook.pst file, can't I just point thunderbird to that file somehow?

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I have a 6 GB Outlook file that won't load in Outlook any more. I am not sure what recovery options I have available. I downloaded one recovery tool demo which shows some but not all mail messages.

Are there any tools that have worked for you? Can I import the PST files directly into another software?

EDIT: I have tried scanpst quite a few times but it fails to recover the file.

PST File Same Size After Archiving

After archiving about half the messages in Microsoft Outlook 2003, the main PST file has not changed in size. Isn't the point of archiving to keep the size of the PST file under control?

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I have large pst files which I need to split into smaller pst files. Is this something that can be done? Where the split pst files remain usable in outlook.

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I have 2 outlook archives (.pst files) that I wish to merge together.

How do I do that?

Outlook 2007: "The set of folders cannot be opened" PST has reached its maximum size

I have outlook 2007. There's a PST file that Outlook is now refusing to open. When I click on it, it says

The set of folders cannot be opened. XXXXX.pst has reached its maximum size...

Outlook is telling me to delete items from the PST. But... ah... the folder is not openable, so of course I cannot delete items.

I read up a little on this. The older Outlook datafile format supported a max size of 2gb. This file is right around 2gb - just under. And I checked, it is a Outlook 2000-2002 PST file.

How can I solve this problem?

Getting an Oulook PST file error

Having an issue with Microsoft Outlook caused by a 1.9-gig Outlook PST file. Is their a way to allow the file to be bigger or any other options to prevent this error?

Looking for software to search multiple PST files with one search [closed]

I have many PST files that I am trying to find all instances of a search term in for a court subpoena and then pull those out, preferably into another PST. I am looking for software that will let me do this quickly. I have Microsoft Outlook 2007 installed, but that will not work because it will only search through 1 PST file per search. We've tried X1, but thus far we've not been able to get it to return the read receipts that match the search term.

Does anyone know of any software that would help us? Preferably Windows-based, but if Linux-based software did the trick, I could persuade my boss to let me take my laptop.

How can I export all email addresses I have sent to from Outlook or any other Email Client?

I would like to export a list of email addresses of people I have previously sent mail to. I don't think there is a way to do this without an add-in.

I tried a tool called Gwabbit and it did not do what I needed.

There are some answers here based on the NK2 file and utilities that read it, but it's not the solution because the NK2 file will not always have every recipient you've ever emailed for the following reasons:

1. You can edit it (simply by deleting a suggested contact as it pops up)
2. It's unique to your profile (each login on each device, not counting roaming profiles), so if you use multiple machines/devices it doesn't get all recipients.

What I really want is to go through all the sent mail, optionally my received mail too, and harvest all the email addresses in there.

I initially wrote this question for Outlook, but if there is an app or utility that will do this outside of Outlook, it's worth migrating mail, even if just for this one time need.

Can I access Microsoft Outlook PST archives with any other tools?

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.

Why did compacting my Outlook PST file just double the size of the file itself?

Now, I'm a complete n00b to Outlook 2007 administration, but after deleting a whole bunch (thousands? more?) of automated alerts, I decided to try a more immediate solution to tame my 2.2GB inbox PST. My first course of action was to compact the PST, via the Data File Management dialog and clicking on "Compact Now" for the correct inbox.

This may have been mistake #1 (perhaps the only mistake), but after a period of about 30 minutes, I hit 'Cancel' and figured I'd wait until the end of the workday. By this point, the size on disk of that inbox' PST was 3.2GB. Uh oh. Any subsequent attempts to compact the file have taken about 10 seconds to process, and not much happens. I've been checking activity via FileMonitor, but there are only a handful of reads, writes, and flushes to the PST, and the file size remains the same.

Finally, I tried forcing an archive of the inbox, and while my Archive.pst grew by about 500MB (I rarely archive, and don't have autoarchive on), Outlook.pst will not budge in size.

Any thoughts as to what I can do, or at least what I did wrong (feel free to chide me!)?

Edit: I'm not sure if it's relevant, but this is just against a POP3 server, not Exchange.

Edit^2: So I ran ScanPST in Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12, and it did find errors that required attention...but the net result is that, without Outlook running (and thus receiving more mail), the PST file grew another 100MB.

Empty Trash in Outlook

I accidentally imported a large number of folders and emails into my outlook exchange account. It will let me delete the mail messages, but any folder that has message in it cannot be deleted. This means I have to go through each folder and empty it out first, which will be painfully long.

Is there any way around this problem? Perhaps just a way to force empty the trash?

Error looks something like this:

Outlook has not finished synchronizing local changes made to items in this folder. You can not delete this folder until the synchronization with the server is complete.

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I have a problem with my old Outlook PST file. When I use it or import it, it makes Outlook crash. Do you know any tools to fix this kind of file?

I have Windows XP XP3 with Outlook 2007.

Increase Microsoft outlook 2007 PST file limit

I am unable to send/receive any emails in my MS outlook 2007. I am prompted with the following error

Can't move the items. The file <path>\<filename>.pst has reached its maximum size. To reduce the amount of data in this file, select some items that you no longer need, and then permanently delete them.

I looked up this link to understand more but my registry doesn't have the required entries.

Has anybody else faced the same problem ? If so can you please help me out ? Its urgent as i have a very important demo tomorrow. Thank you.