3d ago

Any truly free options for converting Outlook PST files to MBOX (or something else) without Outlook?

I retired at the beginning of the year, and before leaving I saved all my personal email from my work account to a PST file. I had confirmed in advance that Microsoft has a free utility for converting PSTs to Gmail. What I didn't realize until I was gone is that the utility requires you to have outlook installed, and I don't have it at home.

I read that Thunderbird can import PSTs to MBOX with an add-on, but it doesn't seem to. There are a mess of conversation utilities, but they're all restricted to a small number of emails for the free versions.

I'll probably just give in and buy one, even though I only need it one time for one (huge) file, but I thought I'd ask if anyone had done it and has a better option.

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11 comments

I've used libpst to be this in the past. On Debian it's packaged as pst-utils. The readpst util will convert your PST to a variety of formats including MBOX.
- Hmm, okay, that sounds good. This is a Python? So I just need to install Python and then download libpst?
  For context, I have a CS degree (1985) and was a software engineer for many years, but I went up a management ladder like 20 years ago, and about the only programming I've done since has been office VBA. I'm retired now. I've never used Python or git personally, though I managed people who did. So a couple pointers to get me on the right track would be appreciated.
  
  It might already be packaged for whichever OS you're running, and it comes with a utility to do the conversion. On Debian or Ubuntu it should be as simple as installing the pst-utils package and running something like readpst <path to .pst file> and it'll leave an mbox file for you. It's been a fair few years since I used it, so reading the documentation would probably be wise, but I remember it being pretty straightforward.
  I don't have a Redhat machine handy right now, but it looks like the package is called libpst there. On a Mac you'd need to follow the build instructions in the git repository, but it's not python, the main library and utils are written in C. The tarball they refer to it just a tar of the source, that you can download form the releases page. I can't help you if your running windows, I don't have a machine running it, and haven't used it in many years.
  
  Okay, thank you. I am, in fact, running Windows. I appreciate the info.

11 comments