I would like to access my Microsoft Outlook archives (pst files) from machines that do not have Microsoft Office installed. Is that possible? Think of several years worth of PST archive files.
My basic criteria for access are as follows (in decreasing order of necessity),
- Open the PST file and view individual mails and attachments
- Search the mails (as close as I can in Outlook)
- Edit: delete mails or attachments
- Reorganize: move around mails across folders in the PST or outside to other formats handled by the tool (Say the Thunderbird native formats for example)
- Copy-in: move other mails into the PST file (this is stretching a bit far I guess)
If you know of tools that will work with some version of Outlook PST files, that is fine.
If you know of tools that are based on Linux rather than Windows, that is fine too.
Update: Recent Slashdot thread: Microsoft Opening Outlook's PST Format.
Based on this MSDN interoperability article:
Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation.
In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format.
Answer
The .PST file is a proprietary format, and AFAIK, can only be used by Microsoft products.
There are ways to get around this, such as using Thunderbird to open the file and creating a new archive based on the mbox format.
This initial conversion can only be done on Windows because it uses a built-in mail API to access the information, but once you have converted the archive it should be accessible by most email tools, both on Windows and Linux.
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