Open a password-protected PST file without Outlook
If a .pst has a password, you need to know it. We built a test archive with the password “secret” (32 emails, 271,360 bytes) and tried four entries with the Mailattic engine.
| Password typed | Result |
|---|---|
| secret | Accepted: the mail is shown |
| Secret (capital S) | Refused: the check is case sensitive |
| wrong | Refused |
| (empty) | Refused |
| Same archive without a password | Opens straight away, any entry is accepted |
Details
What this means: Mailattic asks for the password before it shows anything, and a wrong one just asks again. It does not guess, recover or remove passwords. If you forgot it, check where you saved it or ask whoever created the archive.
Tested on one generated archive with a short ASCII password. Passwords with accents or symbols were not tested. Tested 2026-10-31. mailattic-core 1.0.0.
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About Mailattic
Mailattic is our Windows app that opens a .pst without Outlook, reads attachments, and exports EML, MBOX and PDF. Read-only: your archive is never changed.
Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Microsoft. Outlook and Microsoft are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation and are used only to say which files this opens.