How to Search PST Files Without Outlook

You have a stack of PST files on a hard drive, a departed colleague's mailbox, or an old backup from three jobs ago. You need to find a specific email — a contract, a receipt, a confirmation — but Outlook is not installed, its search is broken, or the PST is not even connected to a profile. Opening each file manually and scrolling through thousands of messages is not realistic.

Mail Terrier solves this problem. It searches inside PST, OST, EML, MSG, MBOX, and EMLX files stored anywhere on your drive — no Outlook required. Type a keyword, set a date range or sender filter, and get results in seconds. When you find what you need, export matching emails to PDF, DOC, XLS, TIFF, EML, or MSG.

What Mail Terrier Does

• Searches PST files without Outlook. Mail Terrier reads PST and OST files directly. No Outlook installation, no profile setup, no MAPI dependency.
• Advanced search rules. Combine keywords with AND, OR, NOT operators. Use proximity search to find words that appear near each other. Filter by date range, sender, or recipient.
• Handles multiple email formats. PST, OST, EML, MSG, MBOX, EMLX — search them all in one session.
• Exports results. Save found emails as PDF, DOC, XLS, TIFF, EML, or MSG. Useful for legal review, compliance, or archiving.
• Works with large files. PST files can reach 20–50 GB. Mail Terrier indexes content and returns results without choking on file size.
• Free for personal use. Home users pay nothing. Commercial license is $199.

(includes 30 day FREE trial)

(only $199.00)

What Is a PST File?

PST stands for Personal Storage Table. It is the file format Microsoft Outlook uses to store a local copy of emails, contacts, calendar events, tasks, and notes. Every Outlook user has at least one PST file, and many have several — one per email account or one per archive year.

PST files are self-contained databases. They hold everything: message headers, body text, attachments, folder structure. A typical corporate mailbox produces PST files ranging from 2 GB to 50 GB.

The problem is that PST is a proprietary format. Only Outlook can open it natively. If Outlook is not installed — or if the PST belongs to someone else's account — you cannot just double-click the file and browse its contents. Even when Outlook is available, its built-in search often fails on disconnected or archived PST files. The indexing service may skip them entirely.

This is where a standalone PST search tool becomes necessary. You need software that reads the PST structure directly, without relying on Outlook or Windows Search indexing.

How to Search PST Files Without Outlook

Mail Terrier makes PST search straightforward. Here is the process from start to finish:

• Step 1. Download and install Mail Terrier. The installer is under 15 MB. It runs on Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11. No Outlook installation needed.
• Step 2. Point Mail Terrier to your PST files. Browse to a folder on your hard drive, an external drive, or a network share. You can add multiple PST files (and other email formats like OST, EML, MBOX) to the same search session.
• Step 3. Enter your search query. Type a keyword, a phrase in quotes, or build an advanced rule. Use AND to require multiple terms, OR for alternatives, NOT to exclude words. Set a date range to narrow results to a specific time period. Filter by sender or recipient address.
• Step 4. Review results and export. Mail Terrier displays matching emails with subject, sender, date, and a content preview. Select the messages you need and export them to PDF, DOC, XLS, TIFF, EML, or MSG.

The entire process takes minutes, not hours. There is no need to import PST files into an email client, rebuild search indexes, or wait for Windows to crawl through gigabytes of data.

Why Use Mail Terrier to Search PST Files?

No Outlook Dependency

Mail Terrier reads PST files using its own parser. It does not call Outlook, does not use MAPI, and does not require any Microsoft Office component. This means you can search PST files on a clean Windows machine, a server without Office, or a forensic workstation. The PST file does not need to be connected to any Outlook profile.

Advanced Search Operators

Simple keyword search is only the starting point. Mail Terrier supports Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), proximity search (find two words within N words of each other), exact phrase matching, date range filtering, and sender/recipient filtering. These features let you build precise queries that return exactly the emails you need — not hundreds of irrelevant matches.

Multi-Format Support

PST is not the only email archive format. Departed employees may leave behind OST files (offline Outlook cache), EML files (individual messages), MSG files (Outlook single-message exports), MBOX files (Thunderbird, Apple Mail), or EMLX files (Apple Mail). Mail Terrier searches all of these in a single session. You do not need separate tools for each format.

Export to Standard Formats

Finding an email is only half the job. You usually need to save it, forward it, or submit it as evidence. Mail Terrier exports search results to PDF (for legal and compliance), DOC and XLS (for reports), TIFF (for imaging workflows), and EML/MSG (for re-importing into email clients). The export preserves message headers, body, and attachments.

Online PST Viewers vs Desktop PST Search Tool

When Do You Need to Search PST Files?

Legal discovery and compliance. A litigation hold requires you to locate every email related to a contract, a client, or a specific date range. PST files from former employees sit on a file server. Mail Terrier searches them directly and exports matching messages to PDF for legal review.

IT offboarding. An employee leaves the company. Their mailbox is exported as a PST file. Months later, the team needs a project document that was shared via email. Instead of importing the entire PST into someone else's Outlook, the IT admin runs a keyword search in Mail Terrier and extracts the specific message.

Email migration and auditing. You are moving from Outlook to another email platform. Before migration, you need to verify that specific messages exist in the archive. Mail Terrier lets you search across dozens of PST files in one pass and confirm the presence of critical correspondence.

Personal email recovery. You kept PST backups from a previous job or an old computer. Now you need a receipt, a confirmation number, or a document that was sent as an attachment. Mail Terrier finds it without reinstalling Outlook or configuring a mail profile. And for personal home use, the software is free.

Mail Terrier Customer Reviews 2026

"We keep PST archives of every employee who leaves the company. When the legal team needs emails from a former claims adjuster, I used to import the PST into a spare Outlook profile and search manually. That took 20–30 minutes per request. Mail Terrier finds the exact messages in under a minute. I point it at the PST on our file server, enter the policy number, and export the matches to PDF. No Outlook needed on the forensic workstation."

Mark Driscoll IT Administrator, Insurance Company

"Discovery requests often specify date ranges and keywords across multiple custodians. I load all the PST files into Mail Terrier, set the date filter and search terms with AND/OR operators, and get a list of matching emails in one pass. The export to PDF preserves headers and attachments, which is exactly what opposing counsel expects. This replaced a workflow that used to involve three different tools."

Sandra Kovacs Paralegal, Litigation Practice

"Our old office server had years of email backups as PST files. When a client asked for the original project brief from 2018, nobody had Outlook on their Mac. I installed Mail Terrier on the one Windows machine we have, searched across four PST files at once, and found the email with the brief attached. Exported it to EML and forwarded it within five minutes. The interface is simple — no training needed."

James Whitfield Office Manager, Architecture Studio

FAQ: Searching PST Files ▼