Accessing Outlook .pst files in New Outlook

Anonymous
2024-06-04T14:06:01+00:00

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?

Outlook | Windows | New Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-06-29T16:01:17+00:00

    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

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-06-29T16:03:59+00:00

    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.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-06-29T17:07:09+00:00

    PST support only went away for the free version.

    If you're paying for an Office365 subscription you still have and can access your local hard drive PST files so long as you do NOT switch to "New Outlook". When I did that it let me switch back and kept my local hard drive PST files intact and in my Outlook list.

    Another reason I didn't like the "New Outlook" is it wanted me to give the credentials to my non-MS email accounts so it could move them to the cloud. I have no desire to do that any more than I want to move PST files there.

    If you don't want to pay for the subscription you might investigate the post I did some time ago that had a link with alternatives to read past PST files.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-06-29T17:49:44+00:00

    Just scanned backwards through this thread. Is the link still there? can you reply to me with it?

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-06-29T19:05:06+00:00

    It is still there in my comment from 05-Apr-2025. That ends with me saying I'd done a web search and:

    "That returned various hits including one at Coolutils Converter Blog titled
    "8 Best Ways to Open a PST File Without Outlook in 2024"
    The link to that is: https://www.coolutils.com/blog/ways-to-open-pst-file-without-outlook/

    I haven't tried any of the methods there yet but figured I'd share it here for others."

    On pointing browser to that link today 29-Jun-2025 it still works. However, as noted I haven't tried any of the methods it suggests. I have a paid Office365 subscription so don't need to at this point.

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