Is there a way to convert an e-mail(.pst file) to a .csv or .text file?

[lkempton]

Hello,

I have a .pst file that I need to analyze in Alteryx. I was told there was an Alteryx extention that can convert this type of file format to a .csv or .txt file. Is this possible?

[dataMack]

Hace you tried just reading it into Alteryx as a text file (without converting)?  If that doesnt work, insead of exporting your message from Outlook as a .pst, try exporting it as just a .txt file.

[gmerce]

Hi,

Can I read a list of *.msg email files (all present in the same directory) with an input tool and a dynamic input tool ? I may have to convert the *.msg into *.pst first.

I'd like to apply sentiment analysis algorithms on the emails.

Thank you for your help.

Gilles

[RodL · Accepted solution]

I had one customer that asked about reading Outlook emails into Alteryx. Since Alteryx doesn't natively support .pst or .msg as a file format, we ended up using the trick of connecting MS Access to MS Outlook. (There's more than one way to do things in Alteryx, and it's such an 'open' platform, if there's a way to do it outside of Alteryx, you can usually make use of that.) Here's a link that describes how you create a Linked Table in Access that connects to Outlook. Outlook to Access connection Then once you do that, you can then connect to the Access table through Alteryx. (This is for Office 2010...if you google this, you might get more something for a different version.)

As a side note I found this will only provide access to the text of the emails, not any attachments that are with the emails. A trick we discovered for that is that you can set up a rule in Outlook to save any attachments automatically to a designated folder. Then of course you can use a Directory tool with a Dynamic Input to screen for any files you might want to use in Alteryx. Another customer needed this because a vendor was emailing them a daily file attachment with data they needed for analysis. They merely set up the Outlook rule, and then 'automatically' had access to the files through Alteryx. 

Also, if you prefer to go down the road of converting your .pst to text and using that instead, it appears there are 3rd party apps that will do the conversion from .pst or .msg to text. I found a few by googling "convert outlook pst to text" or "convert outlook msg to text". You could probably set up something using the executable they provide in a Run Command tool in Alteryx and convert and use in a workflow that way.

Hope one of these alternatives helps with getting your sentiment analysis done!

Thanks for the question!

Rod

[gmerce]

Hi Rod,

Your first solution works well. It's fast and easy to connect Outlook to an Access DB.

Thanks.

[lkempton]

Thank you! Were you able to export the entire inbox at one time with this? Or will I have to configure each subfolder?

[gmerce]

It seems Access can only take one folder for each table. There isn't much options to configure it.