Thunderbird PST Import plugin 1.2 user reviews

No longer required as (V17.02 on Win7 Pro) has import from Outlook and OE built in :)
I imported a 466MB Outlook 2007 PST on an i5 in about 5 minutes. Lots of subfolders all appear to have come in.
(Installed Office 2007 Business OEM but not Activated - customer lost his key :\ )
V Pleased. Well done Thunderbird.

@Bevin: There is no update. This is the last version. It is no longer under development, and can be used on older versions of Thunderbird only.

I can't install it into TB 11.1
If you are not going to update the program then please take it off your website.

pst-import_1.2 not compatible with thunderbird version 3.1.16

Having just read all the reviews, why hasn't this been updated !!!!!
People are trying to promote Linux instead of windows and we can't even import email into Thunderbird!!!
Come on people! If I had known this I wouldn't have converted to Linux!!!!!!!!!!!!

When will the release for Thunderbird 8.0 be released?

this will not work in Thunderbird 5.0

Seems to require Thunderbird 2.0.*. Also, the .pst files you import must be in 97-2002 format without encryption and password, newer ones will not work.

I imported 45 MB of email, using Thunderbird 2.0.0.24, .pst files in 97-2002 format on Windows 7 (64-bit). I also tried .pst files in 2003 format but that failed. It just told me no mail folders were found (like so many have reported earlier). I did not need to set any special compatibility mode for TB however. It worked like a charm :)

I hope it will be updated for TB3 and later .pst file versions.

Doesn't work with Thunderbird 3.1.7

Used this under ubuntu 9.10 (kernel 2.6.31-22) and thunderbird 2.0.0.24.

De-tar'd and installed. I browsed to the directory with the .PST file, and it attempted to start with a message indicating it would take a while because of the file size. Then it reported that it found no folders, and exited having created an empty folder in the local folders group.

I tried to give it the full path of the .PST file, rather than just browse to the directory, and it reported the file already existed.

I'm not much of an expert at this kind of stuff and I tend to triumph by sheer determination rather than outright skill. HOWEVER I DID GET THIS TO WORK EVENTUALLY. I used .pst files created from Office 2000 Outlook and stored on a CD. The computer was running Microsoft 7 (with WLM but no Outlook). I eventually got the Pst Importer Plugin to install having opened its compressed version with BitZipper. I installed it into TB 2.0.0.23 (TB 3.x.x didn't work). I copied individual .pst files (with sizes of hundreds of MB's) to the desktop (not sure if this was required) and used the Import option in Tools on the TB Toolbar. In Import window I selected Mail then on the next screen Outlook Pst. On the next screen I selected Desktop as the folder then OK. I got the French message about expecting a delay with large files. I pressed OK and then waited - the Outlook Pst area was greyed out at this point. Hey presto after quite some time (5 mins) a window opened asking me to select the files I wanted to import. Having done this and pressed OK the files popped up in the TM left panel under Local Folders. It seems as though each import attempt generates an Outlook Pst MailX folder and each folder contains a Deleted Items folder. I followed the same procedure more or less for the contacts which were also saved as a Pst file: Address Books - Outlook Pst - locate the file with the contacts using the All files option and select the .pst file. As far as I can tell the files look OK - in the sense that the text is OK and attachments such as Word and PDF's open fine. SO PERSEVERE AND BE PATIENT WITH THIS ADD-IN!!

I downloaded Thunderbird and the PST import plug in 1.2 according to your instructions.
However when i try to istall it from the adds in it gives me an error saying that is not a file that can be installed (error 207), do you have any clue?
Can you please help me with that?
Or suggest me onther way to open pst files on my PC ( SO windows7).
cheers

I am afraid it does not work with Thunderbird 3.1.3

Clearly doesn't work with Thunderbird 3.1 which reports "invalid
installation package." Has anyone FIXED this so it works in
you know, the 21st century? I desperately need it.

Will not install

because: Not a valid install package

It's the only thing I've found that will let me get stuff out of outlook 2000 on windows7 (which doesn't like it at all). After doing the run as adminsitrator bit it could be pointed at the outlook.pst file Ok, but then, after the statutary delay, it imported *half* my folders - apparently it couldn't 'see' the other half! Work-around not yet found...

Glad I read these and followed John's advice from 5/1/09. I would've figured for sure it had just crashed, but it was cranking away. Took a long time but did what it was supposed to do. I'm running Win XP and Thunderbird 2.

I have Thunderbird 3.x and want to import my .pst files to get off of Outlook. How do I do that? Help, please. feel free to email at wkb_1999 AT yahoo.com.

Incompatible with Thunderbird v3 :-(

Like everyone else, did everything, logged in as admin, and it can't see my .pst files. Crap.

Thunderbird PST Import Plugin is not compatiable with MozillaThunderbird 3.0.1 on windows 7

THis is crap!. I jump from page to page to get a simple pluging

Unsuccessful with XP SP3, Thunderbird 2.0.0.23, Outlook 2003 .pst files, no Outlook versions installed:

1. Unzipped twice w/ Win-GZ (.gz) then 7-zip (.tar)
2. Ran TB as Admin, installed add-on, clicked to restart TB
3. Arranged Archive.pst (

As reviewer: decipher said on the 16 Oct 2009, it simply WORKS!

But one has to run it as administrator - elevated privilages!
It is the only way to get it working under Windows
Even if your logon user is actually a member of administrators group it will not work
Win 7 x86, latest TB, converted the whole site (10 users) with not a single problem
Honestly TB should have it build-in

I used it with Windows7 and thunderbird2. Be aware, you have to start TB as administrator, i.e. left-mouse-button-click on the TB icon and choose "run as administrator"... then it works! (and of course follow the instructions given by some users below... "click away the french message.." ecc. )

Don't work for me. Can't find my pst file.

It DID NOT work on Windows 7 with Thunderbird

I found that even though it gives you the option to import Outlook PST file, that part gives you the french message and doesn't work. Select the Import Outlook option and it will now give you a choice of which folders to import. It still might import the folder structure that you deselected but only the contents of the folders you select.

can't beat free...but message box in french says "this might take a while" (no, i dont know french) and then in english it says no mailboxes found. I am an adminon this machine...dunno how much more "elevated" permissions can get than that?!

When I select the folder which includes the pst file and click open after a french messagge) it does not found the mailbox. Please help me

Would be great if it worked. When I try to import a pst and go to the dir were it is located all my files are "disabled." Even free you should test that it works before putting it out there for the world. It bad bad that 2 years later and you still do not have a working plugin.

When I select the folder which includes the pst file and click open,
then it does not found the mailbox.

This needs to be run with elevated rights. I had te same issue, got the french message about the file taking a long time to load if it's big, and no mail folders found. Once I launched TB as admin, it took about an hour to import the PST(about 2 GB) but it worked fine.

please advise--- I was able to download this add-on; however, when I click install, I get a message that says I can not install becasue this is "not a valid package-207".

I did previously download Thunderbird.

Thanks, Barry

I have been trying to download the Thunderbird PST Import plugin but I'm stuck in do loop and have not been able to get it?

What am I doing wrong?

Runing Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope with Thunderbird 2.0.0.22

Trying to import a Outlook 2003 .Pst file, simply doesn\'t work..i\'m getting one
error message in French like everybody else..funny..

Further to kap-one's comments for Vista got it working by changing Thunderbird shortcut compatibility to XP (SP2) AND selecting 'run this programme as an administrator', then in Thunderbird tools/import/outlook pst, select folder pst file is in, after French message click OK and list of mail folders should appear after a wait (do check task manager to see that readpst+.exe is running).

This is rubbish, have downloaded and installed into thunderbird, when you do import PST it says "Wait for a moment to install the large file" in French and then says Mail imported successfully/No Mailbox found. Deeply irritating as I dont' want to have to install Outlook just to get at these files!

This is an excellent tool. Thunderbird 2.0.0.22, Win XP SP3. Worked like a dream. You'll need to unpack the xpi file twice. I used 7-zip.

I use Vista; just managed to import an Outloot 2002 pst. After installing the pluging I restarted Thuderbild with the (Run as administrator) option. Then Thunderbuild was able to identify the pst file (I could not before!!!) and import my old archive!

Did anyone find a solution to the import-problem in Outlook 2003? I have the same issue. No prob installing, and seems to work. However, I get the French message, and theres no mail in the imported folder...?

Does anybody know which pst versions this tool does support ?
I do have trouble with Outlook 2003 .pst files.
I do get the french message, but then the message, that it has not found any pst file ..

Hermann

So no documentation although as long as people are brave and patient enough to try and work it out and post there results then i can live with that, makes life more interesting :).

Downloading and Installing was no problem although some IE setups might have problems with the tarball, tar.gz, just \"save target as\" should work most times when other attempts fail, 7z or winzip will unpack the file

Firstly I had ~15GB of pst\'s in 1 folder so took the advise to copy a small file into a separate folder 0.5GB. My plan will be from now to place all my pst\'s into separate folders and install 1 by 1.

From the toolbar : Tools -> Import -> Mail -> Outlook PSTs

This is a new option added by the addon, click next and enter the folder with your pst. You will then get the french message click OK and then notice your single core PC grind to a virtual standstill as the file is read with no indication of progress.

To check everything is moving along OK go to the task manager and check that the readpst+.exe is consuming the majority of CPU and once the process finishes you should see the box with the selection of folders to import, once selected it \'ll tell you how many mails were skipped and not imported. For me the half gig file took ~20mins

Only 3 out of 6000 were skipped so I\'m pleased with that.

I\'m new to thunderbird so I\'m interested how this is stored now, are they still being read from the pst or are they stored in the thunderbird store, my investigation continues......

Seems a bit vague on use, but after I got it unzipped and installed as a Thunderbird extension I got an extra option to import from a PST.

Then chose the folder the PST was in (though it doesn't let you choose the file so I guess it's one .pst per folder) and off it went, a 1.3GB pst took probably best part of 1 hr. a 200MB one about 10-15mins

then I needed to click on each mail folder for the messages to appear -seems Thunderbird needs to build a summary or something.

Needed a bit of initiate to use, but worked great ! I've been trying to find something like this for months.

I'm mainly a Linux user but did this in Windoze then transfered the 'Mail' folder from my profile to the profile for Thunderbird in Linux(on an eee pc) all worked just fine

Although I've got to wait a bit after the French pop-up was gone with no progress indication eventually I got the folders imported. Then I looked at the folders and they contained nothing...
However, looking a little later revealed my mail items!! :-)
Not sure if the plug in continues to work until after it appears to have finished...
(Win2K)

Cant even dl to try. Links just keep taking you round in circles.

20 minutes wasted trying to get it. Moving on.

Useless crap.
Not that i would expect better, having some french inside it. :P

Hey David...When you uninstalled the program prior to re-installing it, did you delete the user profile after the un-install?( and prior to the new install?) You have to delete that manually, it doesn't un-install when you remove the program.

Gave me a message in French saying it might take a while, then immediately stopped saying it couldn't find any PST files.

Did exactly as kap-one suggested in thread and re-installed Thunderbird. Still didn't work. What a waste of time

Working, but with some tricks. In Outlook 2003, create a new PST file, (but the old version 97-2002), copy here the content of your original PST file, close Outlook and import in Thunderbird this last created PST. Anyway, the import is not working very well because randomly skips some e-mails.

Got this to work on XP SP3 no problem. Vista requires a few hoops, they are as follows. Prior to installing thunderbird, right click the setup file and go to Properties. Select the compatibility Tab, and check the box that says "run this program in compatibility for XP SP2. Then Perform the install. After the install Right click the Thunderbird Icon ( shortcut) and perform the same steps as you did for the installer( run in compatibility mode.) Set up your mailbox then install the plugin. If these steps are not performed in Vista the plugin will tell you it did not find any mailboxes. Hope this helps.
www.kap-one.com

useless piece of crap

Doesn't work here either :( Only french error message appears.

Not sure what the criteria is for it working, but I couldn't get it to work. Don't waste your time with it; find another solution if you can.

Successfully installed this extension, then pointed it towards the existing (small, only 30MB) PST file. The error message in French said something about the large file, then it froze TB, and after some time got back with the message "Mail was successfully imported from Outlook PST: No mailboxes were found to import."
Summary: avoid this extension, it does not deliver what it promises.

... don't work ...
Comes up with a Message in French that let me know that it takes a long time to load the PST... but that's it... nothing goes on also after some hours...

After the first try I also thought it do not work. But after reading the comments, I separeted the pst files. In my case pst files from outlook 2003 were not imported, but after a conversion to the older format all worked fine. You have to be patient, after the french message it took a while, till the next screen show up (don't press cancle).

I'm using the latest Thunderbird (2.0.0.18) and Outlook 2003 and I couldn't get it to work either. I first had to unzip the GZIP file and then unzip the TAR file to install the add-on. not unduly difficult, but more than I initially bargained for. then...nothing. I was importing zero files and after reading all the comments I created separate folders to isolate the PST files I wanted. even then, the add-on could not find any "mailboxes" so I called it quits.

It works for me fine. TB 2.0.0.17, Outlook 2000 PSTs. I have migrated successfully about 50 PST files to IMAP using this plugin.

Well... for me it worked.
After waiting a little while.. without any feedback, suddently the application just said it was done!

It's not very straight forward.. but.. It did the job!

Tried to install this plugin. It failed. I've only got Thunderbird on my machine and I wanted to import two pst files. This program is a complete dud. Don't waste your time with it.

Gave a warning (in French!) that the operation would take a long time. Took approx 2 hours to import 1GB or archived mail and worked perfectly.

It doesn't seem to allow you to specify the .PST file directly, so if you have multiple .PST's, you need to put them in separate directories.

An excellent (free) solution if you need access to Outlook emails and don't have Outlook installed.

Not working with PST files from Outlook 2003!!!!!

Ditto - did not work with TB 2.0.0.17 on Win XP SP2 - damn shame. Now what do I tell my boss?

Why is this add on shared on this site? All commenters below are right. This is a useless peace for importing pst-files, though it's good to improve your French skills.

Thunderbird''s plugin doesn't work :(. I'm use Mozilla Thunderbird for windows, Importing all contacts in it from Microsoft Outlook (must be Installed). Then exporting from Windows Mozilla into LDif file. Then importing Ldif file in Linux Mozilla Thunderbird!!!

Doesn't work for me either, same as everyone else. Big shame. Perhaps readpst or libpst are required?

Doesn't work. Same results as listed above for everyone else. This is really a shame because I'm trying to get my wife converted from Outlook to the world of Mozilla and this is a MAJOR roadblock.

Simply just does not work. Using TB 2.0.0.16 on ubuntu 8.01.
Browsing to the directory that contains the .pst file it does not find it.

Does not work on UbuntuME (8.04). Same message in French about the possible long duration of the process. Then a message that there were no address books to import.

No option to import the calendar. This latter is important to me.

I've spent the last couple of days trying to read my PST files without having a version of Outlook installed.

When I saw this plugin I downloaded Thunderbird and gave it a try, I select the correct directory and get some error message in French as mentioned by others.

I've now resorted to downloading the Trial version of Microsoft Outlook, hopefully I'll be able to get the PSTs into Thunderbird that way.

Did not work with the latest version of Thurnderbird and Outlook 2003 pst tile

it does not work on windows xp SP3, tried to import Outook 2007 pst file but didn�t seem to find the file!

Installed PST Import plugin 1.2 in TB 2.0 on WinXP Pro SP3 and attempted to load PST files created by Outlook 2002 (XP) with standard compressible encryption and passworded. No joy - says it can\'t find any files.

Created a new PST file with same Outlook XP but no encryption and no password. This time it found the file and attempted to load the folders in it but didn\'t work very well. It loaded a folder I didn\'t select, reported it had skipped 2 messages in one folder and 12 in the other but actually was missing about 10 times as many - about 5% of the messages.

I attached a password to the file and tried again but this time it couldn\'t find the file at all. I removed the password and it still couldn\'t find the file.

Overall opinion - not usable except as a partial recovery mechanism if all else fails.

It could allow us to tell it where our pst files are located.

If Outlook is not installed on your pc then it cant import your pst files because it is looking to see where outlook\'s installation says to look.

Tried this on Vista Home Prem

I was able to open a 450MB file, most of the email imported (not all). Easy to use.

extension will not install. says it is incompatible with every version i try

Anybody succesful with Outlook 2003 files?
For me the .pst files are greyed and can't be selected.
[Ubuntu 6.06 LTS; Thunderbird 1.5.0.14ubu (20080306); PST import plugin 1.2]

Installation was painless. I used it to import a 98 MB big .PST file produced with MS-Outlook in 2002. After the message "this will take a while" (en francaise), an outline of the folders in the .PST file was shown, and I was able to select the one I want.
The result ended up in "Local Folders", in "Outlook PST Message#", with the folder structure intact. Great Program. Thanks.

What did not work was importing a .PST file that was password-protected.

Is there any documentation for this tool?

Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 on MS Vista Ultima fails to even start the plugin. A dud.

It is not able to parse pst, saying something in french

Upon installation, a small window labeled "Malformed File" and states the following...

"Thunderbird could not install this item because �install.rdf� (provided by the item) is not well-formed or does not exist. Please contact the author about this problem."

When I revisit the Add-Ons window, it says "Not compatible with Thunderbird 2.0.0.12".

I've used the extension on my local machine (win xp sp2) and it works great for for mail (not for the address book!!).
Installing the extention on Citrix (WIn 2003 r2), i get the same error as reviewer Dan:
Comes up as an option when you do tools-> import. Gave me a message in French which ( I think ) said the pst is big so it will take a while, please wait. Click OK and it says it can't find the pst.

Same as the other reviews ... doesn't work.

Same here - have searched for a newer version but no joy.
I've also tried searching for alternatives, but nothing.
I did try giving the .pst files 777 but that didn't make any difference.
I also tried making a small .pst file, but no change.
I did notice it had pst in upper case in the text, so I renamed the file to .PST, but nothing.

Next thing I'm going to try is exporting the files in different formats, see if that does anything.

Looks like there's no getting rid of XP just yet!

In WinXP Pro - same problem, when importing even a small PST file it gives me a french error message which seems to say the file is large and may take some time, then I click OK, then it fails to import every time. Messages and contacts failed in the same way.

Would LOVE to see a working outlook import add-on, any recommendations?!

It did not wiork (using linux fedora 6). The same issue :
Comes up as an option when you do tools-> import. Gave me a message in French which ( I think ) said the pst is big so it will take a while, please wait. Click OK and it says it can't find the pst.

Comes up as an option when you do tools-> import. Gave me a message in French which ( I think ) said the pst is big so it will take a while, please wait. Click OK and it says it can't find the pst.