PST Walker Viewer

Open Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost)

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:

• Like Microsoft Outlook: Quick scan using file metadata.
• Extensive Scan: Full file scan to find email and folder records. This option can be used to display Outlook's internal structure or recover data from damaged and corrupted files. Note: processing takes longer than the 'Like Microsoft Outlook' option.

• To suppress this dialog, you can set <add key="Options.Show" value="False"/> in the pstwalker.exe.config file.

You also have the option to select:

• Find hard-deleted and orphaned items: to recover permanently deleted emails and folders.
• Automatically open this file at startup: to open the file each time PST Viewer is run.
• Auto-detect encryption: can be used if your file won't open in Outlook.
• Create a log file: to record processing logs; this file may be needed to identify errors during processing.
• Encoding: the default encoding for emails.

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'.

Open Outlook items and embeded emails (.msg and .eml)

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.

Change Encoding or Localization

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.

Customize or change a view

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:

• Current View: Compact or Single
• Grid Lines and Spacing
• Reading Pane Layout
• Font or font size in the message list

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.

Search emails

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:

• Instant search: Extremely fast, searching only visible columns in the message list.
• Advanced search: Boolean search and keywords search allows you to broaden, limit, and define your search criteria.

Examples of boolean operators, functions, and keywords search

See more: How to search multiple .pst and .ost files without Outlook

Export Function

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:

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

Additionally, there are 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.

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)
  
  

Examples

Example 1

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.

Example 2

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

See Also