KeyView can extract Outlook items such as messages, appointments, contacts, tasks, notes, and journal entries from a PST file. When a PST file is extracted to disk, the text and header information (To
, From
, Sent
, and so on) from each Outlook item is extracted to a text file. (If you do not want the header information to appear in the text file, see Exclude Metadata from the Extracted Text File.)
You can also extract messages from PST files as MSG files, including all their attachments, by setting the KVExtractionFlag_SaveAsMSG
flag in the KVExtractSubFileArg structure when you call fpExtractSubFile()
.
If an Outlook item contains a non-mail attachment, the attachment is extracted in its native format to a subdirectory. If an Outlook item contains an Outlook attachment, the attached item’s text and any attachments are extracted to a subdirectory.
NOTE: The Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders (PST) readers are an advanced feature and are sold and licensed separately. To enable these readers in a KeyView SDK, you must obtain an appropriate license key from Micro Focus. For information about adding a new license key to an existing installation, see Update License Information.
KeyView provides several ways of processing PST files:
pstsr
reader uses MAPI, but works only on Windows and requires that Microsoft Outlook is installed. pstxsr
reader is available for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) and Linux (64-bit only). The pstnsr
reader is an alternative native reader, for the platforms not supported by pstxsr
. On Windows, the MAPI-based reader is used by default but you can choose pstxsr
if you prefer. On UNIX platforms, only one of the native readers is available (pstxsr
on Linux x64 and pstnsr
on other platforms).
The differences between the readers are summarized in the following table.
Feature | Native Reader (pstxsr) | Native Reader (pstnsr) | MAPI-based Reader (pstsr) |
---|---|---|---|
Platforms supported | Windows x86 and x64 Linux x64 |
All platforms not supported by pstxsr |
Windows x86 and x64 |
Outlook required | No | No | Yes |
MAPI properties supported | Yes. All properties defined in mapitags.h . Object properties are not supported. |
||
Password protection supported | Yes | Yes | Yes (using KVCredential structure) |
Compressible encryption supported | Yes | Yes | Yes |
High encryption supported | No | No | Yes |
To change the reader used to process PST files, change the PST entry (file category value 297
) in the formats
file. For example, to use pstxsr
:
297=pstx
NOTE: You must make sure that the PST that you are extracting is not open in the Outlook client, and that the Outlook process is not running.
NOTE: When extracting subfiles from PST files, information on the distribution list used in an email is extracted to a file called emailname.dist
. This applies to the MAPI reader (pstsr
) only.
MAPI is supported on Windows platforms only and relies on functionality in Outlook. If you want to use the MAPI-based reader, pstsr
, Microsoft Outlook must be installed on the same machine as your application. Outlook must also be the default email application. KeyView supports the following PST formats and Outlook clients:
Outlook 97 or later PST files
NOTE: The Outlook client must be the same version as, or newer than, the version of Outlook that generated the PST file.
Outlook 2002 or later clients
NOTE: You must install an edition of Microsoft Outlook (32-bit or 64-bit) that matches the KeyView software. For example, if you use 32-bit KeyView, install 32-bit Outlook. If you use 64-bit KeyView, install 64-bit Outlook.
If the editions do not match, KeyView returns Error 32: KVError_PSTAccessFailed
and an error message from Microsoft Office Outlook is displayed: Either there is a no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfill the messaging request. Please run Microsoft Outlook and set it as the default mail client
.
The way in which you can access the contents of a PST message attachment is determined by the MAPI attachment method applied to the attachment. For example, if the attachment is an embedded OLE object, it uses the ATTACH_OLE
attachment method. KeyView can access message attachments that use the following attachment methods:
ATTACH_BY_VALUE
ATTACH_EMBEDDED_MSG
ATTACH_OLE
ATTACH_BY_REFERENCE
ATTACH_BY_REF_ONLY
ATTACH_BY_REF_RESOLVE
Attachments using the ATTACH_BY_VALUE
, ATTACH_EMBEDDED_MSG
, or ATTACH_OLE
attachment methods are extracted automatically when the PST file is extracted. An "attach by reference" method means that the attachment is not in Outlook, but Outlook contains an absolute path to the attachment. Before you can extract these types of attachments, you must retrieve the path to access the attachment.
To extract "attach by reference" attachments
ATTACH_BY_REFERENCE
, ATTACH_BY_REF_ONLY
, or ATTACH_BY_REF_RESOLVE
method by retrieving the MAPI property PR_ATTACH_METHOD
.PR_ATTACH_LONG_PATHNAME
or PR_ATTACH_PATHNAME
.KeyView enables you to specify a user name and password to use to open a secured PST file for extraction.
pstsr
). The native PST readers (pstxsr
and pstnsr
) return the error message KVERR_PasswordProtected
if a PST file is encrypted with high encryption. If you are running an Outlook client while running the File Extraction API, the KeyView format detection module (kwad
) might not be able to open the PST file to determine the file’s format because Outlook has the file locked. In this case, you can do one of the following:
Close Outlook when using the Extraction API.
Detect PST files by extension only and bypass the format detection module. To enable this option, add the following lines to the formats
file:
[container_flags] detectPSTbyExtension=1
detectPSTbyExtension
option applies only when you are using the MAPI reader (pstsr
).
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