PST Walker Review

Basic Functions

After installing PST Walker, locate a Microsoft Outlook .pst or Microsoft Exchange .ost file on the hard drive of your PC.

You have two options when opening a file: "Like Microsoft Outlook" and "Full Scan". The full scan option will allow you to recover data from a damaged or a corrupted file but takes longer to load depending on file size. Try both options and compare.
PST Walker

When the .pst file opens, you'll think you're looking at your email program! All of your contact information, email files and folder, and calendar information is present.

If you want to view several emails at once in separate windows, select several messages and click "Selected Items" from the View tab on the menu. Numerous messages can be selected using the standard ctrl-left click and shift-left click commands.

PST Walker also lets you save any attachments that are on your emails. Select the email of your choice that has an attachment you wish to save, and select "Save Attachments" from the "File" menu button. Attachments can be opened by double-click as well.

Search Function

Having all of your email available isn't really worthwhile if you can't find what you want. Fortunately, PST Walker has a great search function.

Select "Find" under the "Tools" menu selection to bring up the search box.

Setup the search options.

Enter the information you want in the search box and click. In the example used below, July, was used in the search field.

After the search is performed, only matching entries are displayed.
PST Walker

Select "Clear" to clear the search results and show the contents of the entire folder.

Advanced Search

To enable advanced search select "Enable boolean search". Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR and NOT to limit, widen, or define your search.
PST Walker

Boolean Search Operators

The Boolean search operator AND is equal to the "&" symbol.
The Boolean search operator OR is equal to the "|" symbol.
The Boolean search operator NOT is equal to the "!" symbol.

Examples:
Using AND narows a search by combining terms; it will retrieve emails that use both the search terms you specify, as in this example:

July & Discount

Using OR broadens a search to include results that contain either of the words you type in.

July | August

Using NOT will narrow a search by excluding certain search terms.

!July

You can always combine multiple search strategies to focus your search to ensure that you find just the emails you want. Here are some examples of more complex searches.

(July | August) & Discount
July & (!Discount)

Export Function

With "Bulk Save As" under File menu you can convert Outlook 97-2007 .pst files to MSG files. There are three options to save:

Selected items
All items in this folder
All items in this folder and subfolders

And two options for titles: item subject and incremental numeric Id.
PST Walker

Command line options (Business version)

Have a lot .pst files to repair, but process requires more manual intervention than you want? Automate it with command line options.

pstwalker [filename] [/E[:msg|umsg] [/Name[:Id|EntryId|Subject]] [/PATH:dest folder]]

filename		Specifies the files to open/process. A filename mask can be applied, e.g. c:\source_folder\*.pst
/E		Bulk extract messages to msg - .msg file format umsg - Unicode .msg file format
/Name		Naming style for the saved messages Id - incremental Id EntryId - PR_ENTRYID (unique message identifier) Subject - message subject
/PATH		Specifies destination folder for bulk extracted messages