How do I convert PST file to something I can search by text all contents?
I have Outlook 2007 PST files exported to maintain the 5+ years of exchanges our administrator had. They left the company and we want to convert the PST files to a text format and/or something that we can search the contents of including pdf & excel files.
I tried Emailchemy, but all that can do is convert he files to CSV format, but attachments like pdfs are not searchable.
We don't want these files imported to another email client. Just a directory of all the emails with the related attachments.
Software/Hardware used:
Outlook 2007, Windows XP, and Ubuntu 11.10
Software/Hardware used:
Outlook 2007, Windows XP, and Ubuntu 11.10
ASKED:
March 7, 2012 5:58 PM
UPDATED:
April 29, 2012 9:20 PM
Answer Wiki:
If you had Exchange 2010 there is a Discovery Management p0ermission that allows you to search all mailboxes by key words.
To see all answers submitted to the Answer Wiki: View Answer History.
It’s 20,000+ emails, that’s a too much to go one by one to move to HTML. But thanks Harisheldon1960.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998579%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266964%28v=EXCHG.80%29.aspx
I would import it back into Outlook 2007 (safest bet) and then, use search and find the required emails with/without attachment(s), then drag and drop into a folder on your desktop.
This way, it is out of your outlook. I would think this is the most solid way of ensuring what you searching is correct and what you extracting is still the same format as before.
@ Gabe9527, I don’t have the content on an exchange server. The PST files are on my desktop and these emails are not apart of my account but someone that left the company.
I don’t think those commands will be of use to me.
@Arch4ngel, I tried importing the files into Outlook 2007 and searched for content in the attachments and apparently, I couldn’t get the search to look at the content of the attachments. So I don’t know if Outlook 007 has that capability to see what is in an attachment file.
…but attachments like pdfs are not searchable.
Be aware that a .PDF doesn’t have to contain any searchable text at all, other than the formatting instructions of course. Many .PDFs are created explicitly to block searching. They might only contain images of pages of text rather than the text on the pages.
Tom
I understand that, but there may be others that aren’t. Either way, I need to get non-text attachments like excel and pdf files set up so that they can be searched if they are not images.
Getting as many attachments to the emails to be searchable is very important. There’s projects like Tika that can search a PDF file, but it has to be in a the correct format. Emailchemy just shoves the contents of the PDF into the same file as the email messages and that doesn’t help.