PST Bridge Manual

Managing Outlook pst files

Open, locate, rearrange and close Outlook pst files.

Inspecting items

Messages, Contacts, Appointments, Journals, Tasks and Notes

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Working With Outlook Pst Files

Opening files

There are multiple ways of adding pst files.

Press ⌘O and select one or more files.
Use the toolbar Open button.
On the File menu, select Open.
On a Finder window, select one or more pst files, right-click and select Open.
Drag and Drop: On a Finder window select the files you wish to open, and drop them on the right pane of PST Bridge.

When you add a file to PST Bridge, the application needs to scan it first. Time will vary depending on the number of files being added, and their sizes.

Once the file has been added, you will be able to inspect its contents. However, in order to search through it, you may need to wait until the search index gets created. Indexing is done in the background, but a status message bar will appear at the bottom of your window to show progress. For further information, please read the preferences section.

Rearranging files

You may alter the order in which pst files are shown in the folder tree, by clicking on the root folder of a file and drag it to the desired position.

Locating files

If you have an opened pst file and would like to know its location, simply right-click on its root folder. A contextual menu will appear and will display its path. You will also have the option to "Show in Finder".

Closing files

If you no longer want to have PST Bridge open a file for you, you may close it by right-clicking on its root folder. A contextual menu will appear and give you the option to close the file.

Inspecting Folders

Show and hide the folder tree panel

The folder tree panel can be shown or hidden, using the View menu (⌘T), or by clicking the toolbar button as shown below:

Folder types

Apart from the normal message folders, a pst file can contain other special folders, such as: contacts, appointments, tasks, journal entries and sticky notes. You may choose to display all folders, or only the type you are interested in. Use the small icon bar to indicate your selection:

IMPORTANT: In some odd ocassions, you may find an outlook file which contains some items in the wrong folder type. For example, you may find a sticky note inside a calendar folder. That is not standard, but it might happen. In such case, when opening the calendar folder the note will not be shown. For those cases, if you would like to force PST Bridge to open a special folder as if it were just a simple message folder, make sure you hold the ⌘ key down while you select the folder. Normal folders can display all item types.

Inspecting Items

Show and hide items list

The item list panel can be shown or hidden, using the View menu (⌘I), or by clicking the toolbar button as shown below:

Item types

Items in the pst file may be of different types: messages, contacts, appointments, journal entries, tasks or sticky notes. Messages are located in normal folders, while the other item types usually reside in special folders of the same kind. For further information about special folders, please read the folder section.

Depending on the type of the selected folder, sorting and grouping options will be different. You may change the way items are sorted and grouped, by clicking on the list item header as shown below:

Messages

Messages can be printed, replied and forwarded. When sending a message, PST Bridge will launch your default mail application. You may change your default program using the Preferences window.

The contact picture shown for each mail is retrieved from your Mac's address book. For an address book entry to be considered a match, it has to have at least one email address matching the sender of the message (or primary recipient when displaying the sent folder).

When a message contains attachments, a button will appear on the right side of the message header. This button will let you perform multiple actions on the attachment files:

Quicklook: If the file format is supported by the quicklook viewer, the attachment can be visualized without having to launch a new application.
Open: This option will launch the default application for the attachment type.
Open with: You will be given the option to select an application to open the attachment.
Save: The file is saved to the default folder specified in the Preferences window.
Save as: You are prompted to specify a folder to save the attachment..

Contacts

Contacts and distribution lists share the same folder type. Using the sort and group button you may specify which kind you prefer to have listed first.

Contacts and distribution lists can be printed. The picture shown for each contact, is taken from the outlook pst file, should the contact have one. The system's address book is not searched for a picture.

Calendar appointments

Calendar appointments in outlook can be single or recurring (also known as series).

Single appointments: These are the simplest appointments which only have one ocurrence.

Series: You have the option to display the specific ocurrence information for the selected event, or you may display the generic information that applies to the series. Note that some events may have exceptions, which are also properly displayed when one is clicked.

Note that in the case of a series, the item list will show only one entry per series. However, the calendar view (day, week or month) will show all ocurrences.

Journal

When a journal entry contains attachments, a button will appear on the right side of the header. This button will let you perform multiple actions on the attachment files:

Quicklook: If the file format is supported by the quicklook viewer, the attachment can be visualized without having to launch a new application.
Open: This option will launch the default application for the attachment type.
Open with: You will be given the option to select an application to open the attachment.
Save: The file is saved to the default folder specified in the Preferences window.
Save as: You are prompted to specify a folder to save the attachment..

Journal entries can be printed.

Tasks

Tasks can be printed. No other special considerations.

Sticky Notes

Sticky Notes can be printed. No other special considerations.

Finding Items

PST Bridge offers two methods to help find locate items: filtering and search.

Item filtering

The item panel contents can be filtered, using the text field located at the bottom of the list. Filtering only checks the "subject" field. For email messages it also checks for the originator and recipients. The message text, however, is not used for filtering. If you need such an option, use Item Search.

Item search

Important: For the search to work, indexing must be enabled. Note that if index creation has not finished, search results may be incomplete. For further information, please refer to the preferences section.

Using the text field located in the toolbar, you may search across multiple folders for a specific pattern. Multiple patterns may be specified and each can be looked in specific fields. Available fields are: subject, item text, originator, recipient and attachment name. There is also an option to look in all fields.

Search pattern

Patterns can be joined using the logical OR/AND operator. To change the joining operator, use the magnifying glass button and the operator menu will display.

Once a search pattern has been entered, its search field can be changed by clicking over it. You may also assign a field to a pattern by typing it. For example, type subject:flight and hit enter, to create a search patter with the text "flight" and the field "subject".

Items will match a pattern, if the field contains a word that starts with any of the words in the pattern. However, you may be more strict and enclose the pattern in quotes to force a phrase match. For example:

subjectparis flight	will match all the following: [taste the parisian cuisine], [my flight to asia], [last flights available] and [early flight to paris]
subject"paris flight"	will only match the entire words and in the exact same order [your paris flight is ready]. It will not match [paris flights] due to the 's' at the end and the strict quoting, and it will not match [flight paris] either due to the inverse order.

Search scope

The scope of the search can be limited, to reduce the number of results. When a search pattern is entered, a scope bar will appear. It will let you choose to search in all open pst files, in the selected folder recursively, or only in the selected folder:

Export Wizard

PST Bridge can export email messages, contacts, appointments, notes and tasks. Tasks, however, required OS X 10.8 or higher (i.e., Mountain Lion or later).

Before you start using the export wizard, the outlook file must be open. If you have not done it yet, please refer to section managing outlook pst files

The Export Wizard makes the process extremely simple. Just click on its toolbar button, and follow the on-screen instructions. If you need further help, please refer to one of the sections below.

E-Mails

Emails are exported to the .mbox format. This type of files are readable by many email programs, such as Apple Mail, or Microsoft Entourage. If you need help importing messages into your mail program, please refer to the following page: http://www.arrowbit.com/en/help/howto-import-messages.

During export, you will be asked to provide the following information:

Parameter	Description
PST Files	Select the files you wish to export. Only opened files may be selected. To learn more about how to open pst files, please read managing outlook pst files
Folders	For each pst file you have selected, you may specify which folders to include/exclude. Use the drop-down menu to switch between pst files.
Destination	The destination directory where you want the .mbox files to be saved.