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One of my computers recently crashed.
Fortunately, the .pst file was saved so not all is lost. However, I am considering not installing Microsoft Outlook on the new computer. It seemed to take over too much of my system.

A couple considerations:

(1)
If I install Outlook Express instead of the full-blown version of Outlook, will I be able to access the saved .pst file? I really don't need everything; the main things I want are phone numbers, addresses, and various other information from the bodies of the emails.

(2)
If I move away from Microsoft entirely, and get a Linux machine (or even if I don't), can anybody here recommend a third-party product that can view the emails in the saved .pst file? I don't have to edit the file, or anything else--just view the existing emails in the file.

Any suggestions?

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Dani AI

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Brief expert summary and practical options for (and thanks to and for pointing out non-Outlook approaches).

Outlook data (.pst) is the native store for Outlook messages, contacts and other items; it is not the same format used by older Outlook Express (which uses .dbx files), so installing Outlook Express will not open a .pst. Treat the .pst as a single mailbox database and work on a copy of the file only. (support.microsoft.com)

A reliable cross‑platform approach is conversion/extraction with open tools rather than trying to coax another mail client to read the .pst directly. The libpst/readpst utilities convert messages to standard mail formats (mbox/EML) and provide a contact extractor (pst2ldif) so addresses/phone numbers can be exported for import into address books or spreadsheets. Example commands (work on a copy of the .pst): 

readpst -o ./outdir myfile.pst
pst2ldif myfile.pst > contacts.ldif

These produce mbox/EML files and an LDIF contacts file that can be converted to CSV. (manpages.debian.org)

For deeper inspection or forensic-style exports (attachments, trouble with newer formats) the libpff/pff-tools suite (pffinfo, pffexport) is another cross-platform option that lists and exports items from PST/OST stores. Typical workflow is to run pffinfo to inspect the file and pffexport to dump mail/attachments. (manpages.debian.org)

Practical cautions and fallbacks: always work on a copy; if the .pst is corrupt run the Microsoft Inbox Repair tool (ScanPST) first; password‑protected PSTs may prevent third‑party readers and might require the original password or a Windows/Outlook‑based recovery approach; older PSTs use ANSI (2GB limit) while newer ones are Unicode and have larger defaults. If conversion tools fail, a safe fallback is to open the .pst in a temporary Outlook install or VM and export contacts to CSV (importable into other clients). (support.microsoft.com)

This set of options lets the stored contacts and message bodies be extracted without making Outlook a permanent install, while preserving the original .pst.

Member Avatar for usahomegoods

Thunderbird PST Import plugin is a open source utility to import selected folders from a .pst file under both Windows and Linux. This just might be the thing you'd be looking for.

Member Avatar for commodity

Mailbox Reader is best software for view outlook file without outlook.Thanks

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