Install or run the portable version of PST Walker Viewer. During the first run, the application displays a form with Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost) indexed by Outlook's search and history of attached .pst and .ost files. The form includes two tabs: 'Data Files,' which lists files in the user profile directory, and the 'Catalog' tab, which displays files from other locations. To open these files, you may need to first close Outlook. Review and select the files in the list, and then click the 'Open' button.
To open any other Outlook data files, just close this form and click on 'File' -> 'Open.' In the 'Open File' dialog, navigate to the location with .pst or .ost files, and select one or multiple files by holding down the Ctrl or Shift key.
For each opened PST or OST file, an option form will be displayed, allowing you to configure settings. There are two options for opening a file:
You also have the option to select:
When the .pst or .ost file is opened, you'll feel like you're using your email program! All your emails, notes, calendar events, tasks, contacts, journals, and folders are displayed on your screen.
To close an Outlook data file, right-click the mailbox in the All Folders pane and select 'Close' from the dropdown menu, or click 'File' -> 'Close All'.
If you want to open an email or an embedded email in a new window, double-click the email or attachment in the list. To open multiple Outlook items, select several items, right-click, and choose 'Open Items' from the dropdown menu. You can select numerous messages using standard Ctrl+left-click and Shift+left-click commands. Additionally, you can open MSG and EML files in Windows Explorer by double-clicking the respective file.
You may need to change message encoding because the Exchange server does not correctly update the character set in the PR_BODY_HTML or PR_RTF_COMPRESSED property. Therefore, the message body is garbled when PST Walker Viewer tries to display it. Changing the encoding of a message is quite easy: select a message, click 'View' -> 'Encoding' to check the current encoding in use. Then, choose the 'More' option to select the appropriate encoding.
To change the UI language, go to the menu 'Tools' -> 'Language' and select from the following options: Deutsch, English, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Português Brasileiro.
Views give you different ways to look at items in a folder. Each Outlook folder category, such as Inbox, Sent Items and Calendar, allows you to customize your view to change fonts, the organization of items, and many other settings. To customize or change your view, click on the 'View' menu and choose from the following options:
You can also sort, group or ungroup emails, show or hide columns in the message list in a way that's helpful to you. Your settings for sorting and arranging items in a Folder View apply until you change them.
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.
Input the search query in the search box and click 'Enter'. 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.
PST Walker Viewer provides you with a number of built-in search filters. To use the built-in filters, click the 'Filter' dropdown button on the toolbar. Based on your preference, you can choose search type by clicking the button on the right side of the search box:
Type this | To find this |
---|---|
body:agenda | Items that contains agenda within its contents. |
from:(=bobbymoore@contoso.com OR "bobby moore") | Items in which the e-mail address equals bobbymoore@contoso.com OR sender name contains bobby moore. Note the use of parentheses to group the display name and email address. |
ALL(messagesize:<=100kb, hasattachment:yes, ATLEASTONE(attachments: "txt", attachments: "pdf")) |
Items less than 100KB in size with attachments with the extension txt or pdf. |
See more: How to search multiple .pst and .ost files without Outlook
Whether you want to export emails and attachments in bulk or convert your emails, calendar, contacts, and tasks to various file formats, PST Walker Viewer offers powerful functionality for exporting and backing up items from .pst and .ost files to .pst, .mbox (Thunderbird), .msg, and .eml file formats.
There are three options for exporting items:
Additionally, there are three options for titles: item subject, incremental numeric Id and PR_ENTRYID.
With the use of command line parameters you can automate PST Walker workflows in batch processing.
Note: Command line parameters is not available with a Home license.
Usage: pstwalker-cli [command] [options]
Command: export
Description: Export items from .pst and .ost files to various formats
Options:
-f, -file File(s) to be exported. Specify the path to the .pst or .ost file(s), supporting wildcard characters (*?)
-e, -format File format for extracted messages: msg, umsg, eml, pst, mbox (optional; default: msg)
-n, -name Naming convention for saved messages: id, entryId, subject (optional; default: subject)
-q, -query Search query for filtering messages (optional)
-p, -path Destination path for extracted messages (optional)
-fullscan Perform an extensive scan for damaged or corrupted files (optional)
-harddel Find 'hard deleted' and 'orphaned' items (optional)
-harddelonly Export only 'hard deleted' and 'orphaned' items (optional)
-mkdir Create an individual directory for each exported file (optional)
-srcfolders Preserve the source folder structure (optional)
-empty Include empty folders in the export (optional)
-storename For pst: Specify the display name of the new Outlook data file (optional)
-destfolder For pst: Destination Outlook root folder for exported folders and items (optional; default: IPM Root Folder)
-split For pst: Create dedicated PST files for each folder (optional)
-headers For mbox, eml: Save internet transport headers (optional)
-mode Overwrite mode (optional; default: rename)
For msg, umsg, eml: rename, overwrite, skip
For pst: rename, append
For mbox: rename, overwrite, append
-l, -log Create a log file in the destination folder (optional)
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\PSTWalker Software\OST PST Viewer\"
$PSTFiles = @(Get-ChildItem "c:\outlook data files\").VersionInfo.FileName
foreach ($PST in $PSTFiles){
.\pstwalker-cli.exe export -f "$PST" -e pst --% -q 'from:(=bobbymoore@contoso.com OR "bobby moore")'-p "D:\PST-Exports\"
}
This example searches all mailboxes in "c:\outlook data files" folder 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".
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.
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\PSTWalker Software\OST PST Viewer\
pstwalker-cli.exe export -f c:\users\*.pst -e eml -p "D:\PST-Queries\" -q 'subject:"Your bank statement"' -fullscan -harddel
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".
Updated on September 02, 2023
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