Search multiple .pst and .ost files without Outlook

Learn how to search through multiple .pst and .ost files without using Outlook. With boolean search, built-in search filters, and regular expressions, you can easily locate essential emails, contacts, tasks, and other data within multiple Outlook data files, including corrupted, orphaned, archive, password-protected, and encrypted files.

To refine your search results, you can use boolean operators, functions, and keywords in addition to searching for words, phrases, and date ranges. OST PST Viewer (PST Walker) is a powerful and user-friendly PST file search tool that can efficiently scan any .pst and .ost file and provide you with accurate search results. Give it a try!

Search Basics

To start your search, select either a specific file or folder, or select All mail items to search across all open files, in the folder pane. Then, click on the search box at the top of the message list window.

• The search tool uses wildcard matching to search for numbers, words, or phrases that you type into the search box at the top of the message list. For example, if you type mail into the search box, the tool will return messages that contain mail, Mail, gmail, and E-mails. By default, searches are case-insensitive. To make your search case-sensitive, check the Match case checkbox in the search options.
• When you type specific words to include in the search, the software scans both email messages and embedded email attachments (.msg and .eml files).
• If you type in an email address, the search tool will return all messages that contain that email address anywhere in the sender name, subject, message body, or attachments. To limit your search results to emails from a specific email address, type from:sender@email.address in the search box.

Built-in search filters

PST Walker includes several built-in search filters. You can use these filters to narrow down your search results according to your preference. To use a predefined filter, click on the Filter dropdown button and select one of the following criteria: Unread, Has Attachments, From, Subject, Sent to, Received, Sent, Message Size, and more. Alternatively, you can right-click on a column header to access the Filtering menu. From there, select one or more distinct values from the column, and click "Apply". This will display only the rows that have one of the chosen values for that column.

Features

• Instant search results
  Review highlighted keywords so you don't need to look for the search criteria.
• Search multiple keywords
  Refine your search using the boolean search operators and functions.
• Fast multi-threaded searching
  Highly efficient search algorithms mean that you spend less time waiting for results.
• Printing and Exporting
  Share your results with others using the printing and exporting features.

Search reference tables

The following table shows you some examples of searches you might find useful. In addition to these examples, you can use AND, OR, NOT, ALL, ATLEASTONE, NEITHER, NOTALL, ?, *, <, >, =, and other operators to refine your search. Operators should be typed in uppercase letters.

• Press F1 in search box to show search tree.

Using Regular Expressions

When searching for a text string that contains wildcards (*, ?) or white spaces, the software automatically converts them into their equivalent regular expression patterns. Additionally, a minimal set of characters (\, +, |, {, [, (,), ^, $, ., #) in your search query is replaced with their escape codes. To match a character with special meaning such as (*, ?, "), you need to use an escape sequence prefixed with a backslash (\).

Use the @ special character to initiate a regex search with your specific regular expression pattern. The @ special character serves as a verbatim identifier, indicating that a string literal is to be interpreted verbatim.

Please note that while most regular-expression searches can be executed very quickly, it's important to be aware that regular expressions can be constructed in a way that consumes arbitrary amounts of time and memory during processing.

Search Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost) using PowerShell

PstScan Pro is a command line tool that can be used to search Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost) for specific content using PowerShell. It offers command-line options for searching and exporting results to various file formats, making it easy to find the information you need.

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\PSTWalker Software\PstScanPro"
$PSTFiles = @("c:\outlook.pst", "c:\outlook.ost")
foreach ($PST in $PSTFiles){
   .\pstscanpro.exe convert eml -f "$PST" -p "D:\PST-Queries" --headers --srcfolders --% -q "from:(=bobbymoore@contoso.com OR ""bobby moore"")"
}

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\PSTWalker Software\PstScanPro
pstscanpro.exe convert pst -f c:\users\*.pst -p "D:\PST-Queries" -q "id:>=52A924" --srcfolders --fullscan --harddel

Updated on November 07, 2023

See Also