Import / Read Outlook PST in Thunderbird

We hit various scenarios where we need to ship an exported Office 365 mailbox in Outlook PST format to users who don’t have Outlook to read the messages. Here’s a neat and free way to give them access from a PC or Mac (you will need a PC to get there).

At a high level the process has three steps: setup, conversion from PST to EML format, import.

Setup

This process relies on the readpst tool which is part of the libpst utilities from the 510 Software Group. If you have a Linux machine to hand then you may find this is included in your Linux distribution, but here I’ll provide instructions for running this under Windows using Cygwin:

1. Download and run the Cygwin installer (run it with the --no-admin switch if you don’t have Admin credentials)
2. Remember where you installed Cygwin to – this defaulted to C:\Cygwin64 for me
3. Choose options as you need, but on the Select Packages window change the View to Full, search for readpst (type the name, don’t press Enter), and select the latest version of the package
4. Complete the installation

You will also need to download and install Thunderbird on the machine you want to read the email on. This can be a Windows PC or a Mac. Once Thunderbird is installed, setup a handy import/export add-in:

1. Choose Tools > Add-ins
2. Open the Extensions tab and search for ImportExportToolsNG
3. Select the add-in and click Add to Thunderbird, follow the prompts to install and restart

Convert PST to EML/Thunderbird

Here are the steps to convert the PST file, which I’ll assume is on a USB stick:

1. Copy the PST file to C:\Cygwin64\home\User\Outlook.PST
2. Open a cygwin terminal and enter the following command:

   mkdir mbox && readpst -D -e -w -o mbox Outlook.PST

3. Close the cygwin window (run the command exit)
4. If you are running Thunderbird on a different machine then copy the C:\Cygwin64\home\User\mbox to the USB stick

Conversion runs at about 10GB/hr on a commodity solid state drive.

Import Messages to Thunderbird

If you are viewing the messages on a different machine to where you did the PST conversion then copy the mbox folder off the USB stick. Next:

1. Open Thunderbird
2. Right-click Local Folders and choose New Folder. Enter a folder name and confirm
3. Right-click the newly created folder and choose ImportExportToolsNG > Import All Messages From a Directory > also from its subdirectories
4. Select a top-level folder inside the mbox directory you created (C:\Cygwin64\home\User\mbox\* if you’re on the same machine you did the conversion on, wherever you copied the mbox directory to otherwise)
5. This will import all the messages, preserving the original folder hierarchy, into Thunderbird. Note that it complete ignores the folder you created in step 2 and puts these right under Local Folders
6. You can delete the mbox folder now if you want.

Note that the import runs at about 5GB/hr.

Numbered Paragraphs in Word (Microsoft Office)

Some formal documents require line or paragraph numbering. This is where the relevant items are numbered sequentially through your document, with the numbers appearing in the left-hand margin.

Whilst line numbering in Word is easy to configure (Layout > Line Numbers), there is no equivalent facility for paragraphs. Instead you need to use Numbered Lists, with a twist. The method below works well for typical documents, copes nicely with headings, tables and images, and has a simple way to include real numbered lists. It doesn’t mess up other document layout features such as headers, footers and text boxes.