Input file
PST
- Full Name: Microsoft Outlook Personal Folder Format
- Developer: Microsoft
Output file
MBOX
- Full Name: Mail Mailbox Format
- Developer: N/A
What is PST file?
The PST (Outlook Personal Information Store File) is a file extension used by Microsoft Outlook to save its emails, calendar entries, contacts, tasks and other associated items. Characteristic of this file extension is that messages and other items are kept in individual folders, according to their classification. Microsoft Outlook stores information on its central database known as an .ost file, but these can only accessed when connected to a server. [ ⏩ ] PST file extension
What is MBOX file?
The MBOX file extension is used for e-mail related files and data structures. In general, an MBOX file contains messages acquired from the e-mail server, which are then stored as individual files. Messages will be stored in the form of a single or multiple ASCII text based MBOX files. The MBOX format is extremely flexible, allowing importing into most email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird. Other related file extensions include .mbx, .mbox/r, and .mbs. [ ⏩ ] MBOX file extension
Software, that you can use to convert
How to convert the file from PST to MBOX?
To successfully convert the PST file to MBOX, you should install one of the applications from the list. After installing the software, open the program and select the file you want to convert (file-name.PST). The next step is to select the target format from the list, in this case MBOX (usually converters allow you to convert to several different formats, so check out their features - maybe one of the available formats will suit you more than MBOX).
What is a file conversion?
A data conversion is normally an automated process to some extent. The effect of the operation of one program is automatically the input product of another application. If that does not happen we need to help the process a little bit and convert the file on our own, e.g. PST to MBOX. To obtain a matched structure of the data, it is necessary to use an appropriate converter.
Program for converting PST files to MBOX files is a kind of a "binary code translator" compensating for the differences in the code or translating it in such a way so that another application could use it. For us, as users, the visible change will be only another file extension. (After converting the file, it will be the extension MBOX, while before this step we had the PST file). For the programs, the difference is on a much higher level – either the application will be able to open a new MBOX file, or not.