Exporting outlook email as common format

December 7, 2005 9:46 AM

How do I export outlook email to a common format that I can read anywhere including a MAC. I want to be able to save all my outlook emails but not as a .pst because outlook is the only one that can later read that pst. Is there any tool or export I can use to get each message as a rich text file or some other standard format? The only way I see possible right now is to use the export function to create a tab separated windows or dos file. This sort of works but its messy and all the emails show up as one file. I also thought about maybe exporting it to an access MDB where each record is an email and then creating a report to display them nicely but i dont think the field is large enough to store entire messages in some cases. If anyone knows of cheap software that can do this or perhaps a neat hack please let me know. Thanks!
posted by postergeist to technology (7 comments total)

Here's a quick stab at VBA code to save all the messages in the inbox as individual text files:

Sub ExportAll()

Dim Message As MailItem

Set myNameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set myInbox = myNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)

For Each Message In myInbox.Items
Message.SaveAs "C:\MailMessages\" & Message.Subject & ".txt", olTXT
Next Message

End Sub

You can go to Tools > Macros > Visual Basic Editor, then inside the editor, go to Insert > Module. In the new window, paste the above code.

Some potential problems: Subjects being the filename could result in identical filenames, so you'd likely overwrite some of the previously-saved messages, which is bad. I'd probably experiment with changing that line to something like:
Message.SaveAs "C:\MailMessages\" & SequenceNumber & Message.Subject & ".txt", olTXT

...where SequenceNumber is a running counter of how many messages have been exported, for example.

You should create whatever directory is specified above before running the code. In this case I made C:\MailMessages
posted by odinsdream at 10:11 AM on December 7, 2005

To save from a personal folder, the Outlook VB help hints that you'd use something like:

Set myInbox = myNameSpace.Folders("Personal Folders").Folders("Vioxx Advertisements to Review Later")

... good luck!
posted by odinsdream at 10:14 AM on December 7, 2005

Slipstick is my first source for Outlook enhancements. Here is a page of archive utilities (scroll down to "User Tools"). I haven't tried any of them, but you can probably find what you want in there somewhere.
posted by willnot at 10:21 AM on December 7, 2005

odinsdream this is sweet !! Thanks for the effort I really appreciate it !
posted by postergeist at 10:38 AM on December 7, 2005

1) Set up a local IMAP server.

2) Set up an IMAP account within Outlook to connect to your local IMAP server.

3) Copy all desired mail to the Inbox/subfolders of the IMAP account.

4) Log in to local IMAP server from Mac and download mail.

Bonus: Use an IMAP server which stores messages as individual plain text files. Then, you can copy the entire account directory wherever you'd like.
posted by tomierna at 10:42 AM on December 7, 2005

You can open any message in its own window, and go File -> Save. This will let you say rich email in .html or .rtf (also as a .msg file, but I suspect this isn't of much use in your situation).
posted by blindcarboncopy at 1:02 PM on December 7, 2005

I think you're looking at the problem from the wrong angle.
If you want mail to be accessed from multiple platforms, multiple emali clients, from multiple computers then IMAP is the way to go, otherwise you'll never be able to keep everything in sync.
posted by Sharcho at 1:34 PM on December 7, 2005