This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
I have twenty years of history in various .pst files. When I first started using Outlook, my single .pst file and all my folders got too large and I was instructed to move some of my folders into new .pst files. These .pst files contain lots of important emails and historic records attached to emails. So I filed all the emails into various folders within various .pst files.
If Outlook will no longer support .pst files, how will I be able to access the .pst files? I understand that Microsoft will no longer support “Old Outlook”. So what can I now do to be able to access these various .pst files? Should i go back to what I was doing originally and move everything from .pst files into folders within my "root" Outlook email? That would put about 4.5G of emails into my New Outlook. How will that work?
Using New Outlook on Windows for personal email, calendar, and contact management
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I too am very worried about this. I cannot/will not let all my years of data in the cloud. I want it local on my internal NAS.
How can I do this? is there any way outside of Microsoft that it can be accomplished now? I fear that with all the delays, its not going to happen and all my data will be locked or lost.
I am sorry if this is not timely, but I am also very worried about PST file support. I too, have years of backups with critical information stored, locally, on my own hardware.
By 'backup', are you being clear that my backup(s) can be made to local hardware/disks? or is this forcing a backup to the cloud? Its critical to me that the information stay local on my own hard-drive(s). Is this possible? If so, can you please go through the steps to do this?
I am afraid to upgrade to the new outlook until I can successfully import my PST files and move ALL of my data to another location locally if the PST support goes away. Its now end-June 2025 and I haven't seen too much.... was expecting full disclosure on how to do it by End-Year 2024.
Please be very clear about what we can do, as I am sure that there are many people in this situation. (again, I dont want to rely on cloud storage, and need to get ALL my data moved back to local storage /hardware on my site in a format that will be readable / usable for the near future....
thanks
Dan Z
Your PST files don't go away on switch to new Outlook. If you do an online search you'll find other non-MS tools that can read PST files.
If you have a paid Office 365 subscription you will be prompted to switch but it gives you the option to switch back which is what I did since I do have a paid subscription.
A reply on my feedback to MS on switch back said that the paid subscription actually allows for use of PST files. (Not what they'd previously announced.) Due to that I switched to new again but then it wanted to put my other non-MS email accounts in MS cloud. I don't need that since I can access those via their own mail sites on the web. Moreover, I don't WANT that as I have no desire to give MS access to my other email. Accordingly I switched back to classic Outlook again noting that as the reason.
AND NO OPTION TO STORE ANY OF THIS LOCALLY. MY EMAILS. 20+ years of records that I do not want to have sitting in the cloud.
What are the plans for us decidding WHERE the physical data is held. eg.. LOCAL NAS etc ?
As a follow up to my post on 05-Apr-2025.
Outlook did in fact automatically switch me to "new Outlook" on my next reboot.
However, it did let me convert back to "classic Outlook" right away.
It asked why and I told it the lack of support for PST files was the reason.
Since then (some 10 days) it has not attempted to automatically switch me to "new Outlook" again.
Other comments here suggest a paid Office 365 subscription is what allows one to switch back. I do have a paid Office 365 subscription.
P.S. If you do a web search for ways to view PST files without Outlook you'll find various hits. I tried to share a link a few days ago but the post failed for some reason.