How to use PST Walker

Basic Functions

Install or run portable version of PST Walker. Browse and open an Outlook Data File (.pst) or Offline Outlook Data File (.ost) file on your PC.

There are two options for opening a file: Like Microsoft Outlook and Extensive Scan. The Extensive Scan option allows you to recover data from a damaged or corrupted file, but processing takes longer than Like Microsoft Outlook option. Try both options and compare.



When the .pst or .ost file opens, you'll think you're looking at your email program! All of your contact information, email files and folder, and calendar information is present.



If you want to view several emails at once in separate windows, select several messages and click "Selected Items" from the View tab on the menu. Numerous messages can be selected using the standard ctrl-left click and shift-left click commands.



PST Walker also lets you save any attachments that are on your emails. Select the email of your choice that has an attachment you wish to save, and select "Save Attachments" from the "File" menu button. Attachments can be opened by double-click as well.

Search Function

Having all of your email available isn't really worthwhile if you can't find what you want. Fortunately, PST Walker has a great search function.

Input the search query you want in the search box and click "Enter". In the example used below, "April", was used in the search field. After the search is performed, only matching entries are displayed.



Click "x" to clear the search results and show the contents of the entire folder.

Advanced Search

To enable boolean search select "Advanced search" under "Tools->Search Options...".

Boolean search allows you to broaden, limit, and define your search criteria.

Examples

See more examples

Export Function

With "Export..." under File menu you can convert .pst and .ost files to MSG, EML and MBOX files or to PST file. There are three options to save:

• Selected items
• All items in this folder
• All items in this folder and subfolders

And three options for titles: item subject, incremental numeric Id and PR_ENTRYID.

Command line options

With the use of command line parameters you can automate PST Walker workflows in batch processing.

pstwalker-cli.exe 
   [filename] 
   [-E:<FileFormatParameter>] 
   [-Name:<NamingStyleParameter>] 
   [-SearchQuery:<String>] 
   [-ExportPath:<DestinationPathParameter>] 
   [-FullScan] 
   [-HardDeleted | -HardDeletedOnly]
   [-Log]

Examples

Example 1

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\PST Walker\"
$PSTFiles = @("c:\a.ost", "c:\b.ost")
foreach ($PST in $PSTFiles){
   .\pstwalker-cli.exe "$PST" --% -E:pst -SearchQuery:'from:(=bobbymoore@contoso.com OR "bobby moore")'-ExportPath:"D:\PST-Exports\"
}

This example searches c:\a.ost and c:\b.ost mailboxes for items in which the e-mail address equals bobbymoore@contoso.com OR sender name contains bobby moore. The search results are exported to D:\PST-Exports\a.pst and D:\PST-Exports\b.pst

When running native commands from PowerShell, the arguments are first parsed by PowerShell. Beginning in PowerShell 3.0, you can use the stop-parsing (--%) token to stop PowerShell from interpreting input as PowerShell commands or expressions.

Example 2

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\PST Walker\
pstwalker-cli.exe c:\users\*.pst -E:eml -ExportPath:"D:\PST-Queries\" -SearchQuery:'subject:"Your bank statement"' -FullScan -HardDeleted

This example searches all .pst files in c:\users folder for messages and hard deleted messages that contain the phrase "Your bank statement" in the subject. The search results are exported as .eml files to D:\PST-Queries\.