How to export Outlook email to a spreadsheet, including Date/Time fields?

October 29, 2008 8:34 AM

How do I export email messages from Outlook into Excel (or CSV) while retaining the date/time stamp on each message?

I'm troubleshooting an issue which involves me tracking the receipt of various emails. Unfortunately the only copy of the emails is in Outlook 2003. I need to figure out a timeline of what arrived when, and it would be much easier to do in a spreadsheet than within Outlook.

However, Outlook's "Export to Excel" and "Export to CSV" options don't allow you to select the date/time field.

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

posted by geekgirl397 to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Do you happen to have Access installed as part of your Office suite? You can use "Get External Data" in Access to suck email in from Outlook, and the date field can be included. From Access you can dump the table into Excel very simply.
posted by bcwinters at 8:42 AM on October 29, 2008

The Access tip worked like a charm! Although it did involve me polluting my system with more Microsoft software.

Lesson learned .. do not rely on Outlook if it's at all avoidable.

Any suggestions for other email clients that will better facilitate export to spreadsheet? I think Thunderbird will do it, and I have that installed, but something lightweight just to "catch" incoming test messages and spit them out as csv would be ideal.
posted by geekgirl397 at 9:27 AM on October 29, 2008

I don't know of one, and searching for one is less than ideal since every client under the sun advertises CSV export—but only for the address book.

I keep Thunderbird Portable around as part of my swiss army knife but it's definitely not optimized for this sort of thing.

I'm no lover of Microsoft but to a certain degree you're in a "when in Rome" kinda situation.
posted by bcwinters at 10:18 AM on October 29, 2008

Since your data is already in Outlook, have you explored the "Journal" feature, which has a timeline view? I am not at work, so I can't verify its capabilities, but I think this would get you a decent timeline of the emails being sent/received.
posted by misterbrandt at 8:27 AM on November 2, 2008