Some users may migrate to another email program eventually, for instance from Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird or an online email service like Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. And some might want to migrate that old data to another computer, maybe one that is not running Outlook anymore, or a different version of Outlook.

That’s when things get problematic as it is not possible to just open the old Outlook inbox files on the computer then. For that, you may need to use a version of Microsoft Outlook, or a third party program like Kernel Outlook PST Viewer.

When you start the program for the first time after installation, you are asked to select a PST file from the local computer.

The software populates with all mail folders and emails, with options to read all emails that have been received or send. While it is not possible to reply to those emails directly, all the information stored in them is still available, even without access to Outlook on the system.

Other benefits of using the program include the ability to open PST files created with any existing version of Outlook, to view the contents of password protected Outlook PST files without knowing the password, and working around file corruptions.

The biggest issue that users may have is the lack of exporting tools. It is for instance not possible to extract attachments using the viewer. For that, Mailstore is the better choice as the program can make PST data available as well.

Windows users can download the latest version of Kernel Outlook PST Viewer from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. (via)

This can be easily achieved by pressing the Shift key and at least two title columns. It is for example possible to sort by sender and date, title and date or sender and subject. The only important thing to remember is to press the shift key while doing it to get the desired effect.

Outlook will display the up and down sorting icons (up or down arrow) in the columns that have been chosen by the user to make it easier to understand how the emails were sorted. The first selected column will be the primary sort order, the second obviously the secondary with the possibility to add additional columns as well.

Here is a practical example. Lets say you receive lots of message from one email sender. You can sort the emails in Outlook by sender which would display the most recent emails from that sender on the top. If you wanted to sort these emails by size you would simply press shift and then click on the from and size column titles so that the largest emails would be displayed on top from each sender (another click on the size column would sort them with the lowest on top as it would reverse the sort order).

This sorting technique works not only with emails in Outlook but also RSS feeds and pretty much everything else that is displayed in tables in the email client.

The email recovery software will post a list of all available hard drives at the beginning of which the user can select one that should be crawled for deleted emails. The scan of the hard drive depends largely on its size and the available resources. The email recovery application will display the progress at the top of the window including the emails that have been found so far.

The emails can be accessed right away even if the scan of the hard drive is still underway which is excellent if time is of essence. It can happen that the preview of some of the recovered emails is not shown at all or only partially which means that this email is not recoverable completely.

Emails that have been discovered during the scan can not only be previewed but also exported as a txt or eml document. The txt documents are more easily accessible while the eml format can be used to import the emails into email programs like Microsoft Outlook but also Mozilla Thunderbird and others.

It has to be noted that Mail Cure will not only find Outlook Express email messages but also other email messages. A test on a computer that never made use of Outlook Express but Mozilla Thunderbird resulted in thousands of mail messages that have been found after the scan.

The emails can be sorted in various ways including by sender, date or subject. It is furthermore possible to search for text in all emails that have been found so far. Mail Cure is an excellent email recovery software. Its portable nature makes it an ideal companion for a portable tool collection.

Only compressing the folders will delete that email permanently from the computer system. That’s great if you deleted an email by accident and want to recover it but bad if an unauthorized third party tries to read your emails.

Microsoft Outlook provides the means to compress a folder immediately but no option to automate the task. It will however display a popup every 100th time that Outlook got closed asking if the user wants to compress the folders.

A far better solution to force Outlook to delete deleted mails completely at every shutdown is to change a setting in the Windows Registry.

Open the Windows Registry by pressing [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting [enter]. Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office

The next step depends on the version of Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office that is installed on the computer. When in doubt perform the operation for all of the following subkeys.

Find the 9.0, 10.0, 11.0 or 12.0 keys in that folder. Click in the Outlook subkey and locate the key PST. If PST is not existing create it. A full Registry path to the right location could look like this:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\PST\

Only the 12.0 can change in the path. If you are in the PST key right-click in the right pane and select New > DWord.

Name the Dword PSTNullFreeOnClose. Double-click it afterwards and give it the value 1 to enable it. This ensures that Microsoft Outlook will remove deleted mails completely on every exit from the computer system.