frank

I have been using Outlook for quite a while now and have always exported to
a CVS or Excel file when backing up. It's not bad, but viewing e-mail on a
spreadsheet and losing all the attached files is not the best solution.

Are there any good solutions out there? I have a "Save Mail" folder I'd like
to back up every so often and be able to search and read through it. Even if
it exports all the e-mails into one long do***ent, or PDF, that would be
great. Ideally I would like to save the attachments too but that is less
critical.

I believe Outlook stores in mbox format? So maybe a tool that works with
that. Or with Outlook's archive format. Anyway...just looking for a good way
to export all my emails to a normal readable file..thanks!

Frank

--
http://www.mediaartist.com/
"Media Artist Secrets"
The Blog for Creative Professionals

vince averello mvp-outlook

Outlook stores its data in a PST file which is not MBox format. About the
only thing that can read it natively is Outlook (and a few other tools).

frank

There is no way to export out in a readable format except in outlook format?

what are the other tools to read a pst file?

any other options i can try?

I just want to export in a generic format that does not require outlook to
read...

--
http://www.mediaartist.com/
"Media Artist Secrets"
The Blog for Creative Professionals

herb martin

There is "a way" -- this may not be suitable for your purposes
but it is free and it does get you the "entire message" as it would
be sent or, was in fact, received through an SMTP server:

Select MORE than one message (there is a way to do one message
but the simplest method is to select the one plus any other and
remove the extra in the next step.)

Ctrl-F to FORWARD the batch of messages to an SMTP server
that uses the format you wish (maildir, mbox, flat files).
Exim (CygWin) is what I use but Mercury will do if you just
want files or later POP/IMAP access to the files.
I have setup a "catch user" for this purpose since I use this
method to forward Spam and misclassified Ham back to my
email server.

When you select more than one file and forward you get a
multi-part MIME message with all of the selected emails
as separate ATTACHMENTS.

You will need to bust this mail on the server if you wish to
deal with each one separately:

The following (very small) Perl program will split the message
into a subdirectory (..\tmp is hardcoded here:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use MIME::Parser;
my $parser = new MIME::Parser; # Create parser
$parser->output_dir("./tmp"); # Tell it where to output
$parser->extract_nested_messages(0); # Extract messages whole?
$entity = $parser->parse(\*STDIN); # Parse an input filehandle
print "Entity: $entity\n\n" if $entity;

################# That's all ###################

Perl is on most Unix type systems and free for Windows at:

http://www.ActiveState.com

--
Herb Martin, MCSE, MVP
Accelerated MCSE
http://www.LearnQuick.Com
[phone number on web site]

gordon

Why? Just make a copy of your pst file. That's all you need to do.

k orlandv&r

If you're already using Outlook, I'm not sure why you're hesitant to backup
your mail using your PST file. It's quite simple:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/Howto/backupandrestore.htm
Is there a reason you want to open it using Excel or another application?
--
Kathleen Orland
Outlook Tips: http://www.outlook-tips.net/
http://www.howto-outlook.com/
Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center: http://www.slipstick.com

frank

Kathleen,

Well..lets say I backup all my e-mail in a PST file. I delete all the
e-mails in Outlook, start fresh, compact my pst file down. So 2 months from
now Outlook is filled with new e-mails in my new pst file and I need to go
back and look up an e-mail from the backed up PST file.

What do I do then?

Frank

--
http://www.mediaartist.com/
"Media Artist Secrets"
The Blog for Creative Professionals

gordon

In Outlook File-Open Outlook Data File and open the archive file!

k orlandv&r

You can use file/open from Outlook to open the PST, or you can add the PST to
your Outlook pofile from the control panel, mail applet. Go into the
properties of your profile and you can add multiple PST files from there. You
may want to give your PST's different names if you have multiples. such as
frank083005 (your name and the date) for example.
Does this make sense?
--
Kathleen Orland
Outlook Tips: http://www.outlook-tips.net/
http://www.howto-outlook.com/
Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center: http://www.slipstick.com

frank

so you can have multiple pst files open in outlook? I assumed if i loaded
one it would replace the current.

--
http://www.mediaartist.com/
"Media Artist Secrets"
The Blog for Creative Professionals