This is what it does
Open an Outlook archive in this page
Choose a .pst on your machine and the reader parses it here: the folder tree with its content counts, and the opening messages read as text. The archive is never uploaded.
Runs in your browser — the archive does not leave the tab
- What it does: reads a Microsoft-format archive in the page and reports the store name, every folder with its content count, and a first-message sample.
- What to try: choose the smallest
.pstyou have and open the folder tree. Nothing leaves the machine, so a real work archive is the honest test. - What it does not do yet: the browser reader is reconnaissance only. Bodies, attachments and the full extracted tree are what the local Node tool writes, and the packaged tool is on the beta page.
Under the hood
What it is built on
- Stack
- Node.js command-line scripts over a pure-JavaScript extraction library, with no native build step; dependencies are vendored and the test suite is zero-dependency. The browser reader runs the same parsing library in the page.
- Surfaces
- The browser reader above, and four command-line scripts: index one archive end to end, probe its shape, report its date ranges, and bulk-extract a batch.
- Runs where
- The reader runs in this page on the bytes you choose. The packaged tool runs from a checkout with Node installed, on the machine that holds the archive.
- Tested by
- 26 zero-dependency tests that run the real scripts as child processes, including a real-archive integration check with its sha256 assertion and three source-mutation falsifiers.
Status
Where this stands today
- 26 tests pass, 0 failed, 0 skipped. The one real job is run by the suite itself: a genuine Microsoft-format archive — 13.9 MB, 71 messages — is extracted on every run.
- The read-only claim is measured, not asserted. The archive’s sha256 is taken before and after extraction and must be unchanged. The checks can also be shown to fail: three source mutations are applied and the matching assertion is required to go red.
- The evidence is one archive shape. Split archives, damaged stores, older store versions and item types beyond that sample have not been run against, and a damaged archive is reported with its error rather than patched.
Plainly
What this is not
- It is not a mail client and not a hosted migration service. It reads an archive you already hold and writes files beside it.
- It is not a database and not a search product. It produces text and JSON that your own tooling can index, hash and diff.
- It is not a repair tool. A damaged archive is reported with its error instead of being patched into something that looks complete.
Questions about pst-tool
Whether it covers the archive shapes you actually have, what it does with a damaged store, or what the output tree looks like in practice — ask, and we will tell you what it has been run against.