Extract Email Addresses from OST File – Ultimate Tutorial

Summary: Are you also the one who wants to extract email addresses from OST files? No need to go anywhere else, you will get all your answers here itself. Talking about the OST file, it is generated from Outlook and used to store mailbox data on your system. But, it is difficult for users when they want to access specific email IDs from them.

This process is not simple for various users because you cannot open OST files directly. You need Outlook for that. This guide covers different steps to extract email IDs with the help of manual & professional solutions.

Why Do Users Need to Extract Email IDs?

There are reasons to extract email addresses from OST. Read those points given below:

• You might want to extract email IDs from old emails for certain follow-ups
• If you’re switching to a new email client, then you need all your data in new location
• At times, your contacts list is empty because the data exists in your OST file
• Most email IDs are not saved as contacts but can be found within email conversations
• Users want to collect email addresses for data analysis or for records

Why OST Extraction is Not Easy?

Before moving further with the methods part, let’s understand the problem behind this.

• OST files is connected to your Outlook account, so you cannot open it directly
• It is not easy to share or move like PST files
• Almost all type of emails stores the email addresses
• There is no direct option in Outlook to extract all email IDs

Extract Email Addresses from OST – Try Free Methods

You can follow these three solutions for once. But remember this only works for a few email addresses while extracting.

Approach 1. By Exporting Contacts

Remember, this method is effective only when your email addresses are saved inside contacts.

1. Firstly, open Outlook
2. Go to this location: File menu > Open & Export > Import/Export
3. Next, select Export to a file and later CSV as your format
4. Select Contacts folder
5. Now, just save the file to your preferred location

Where It Fails:

• Do not extract emails from message part
• Works for contacts which you have saved
• There is no active Outlook profile

Approach 2. Collect Emails from Inbox Manually

You can copy one by one to extract email addresses from OST files.

1. Open Microsoft Outlook
2. Go to Inbox section
3. View any email of your choice
4. Just copy email IDs from any of the email properties
5. Now, paste into Excel or in your Notepad area
6. Follow the same process for other emails too
7. Do not forget to check the Sent Items folder
8. In Excel, delete the duplicates to sort the list
9. After that, save the file as CSV

Limitations:

• Takes a lot of time
• Not suitable for large mailboxes
• Chances of missing some email IDs
• No smart filtering option for users
• Required proper human effort

Approach 3. Use Outlook Suggestions 

Follow these simple steps to extract email addresses from OST. Here, you can use the Outlook feature to get your email IDs relatively quickly.

1. To begin with, open Outlook and create a new email
2. Tap inside the “To” box
3. Just type A, B, or C and suggested clients will pop up
4. Hover your mouse over a contact to see the full email address
5. Copy the email IDs whichever you want
6. Paste it into an Excel or text file
7. Use different letters to get more emails
8. At last, delete duplicate email addresses

Drawbacks:

• Only shows recent or saved emails
• No export feature
• You cannot extract your emails in bulk

Limitations of Using Manual Methods

Users will face the problem while following the above steps.

• Missing email addresses from threads
• No way to extract bulk data
• Duplicate entries
• No filtering option
• Dependency on Outlook

Therefore, go with our professional solution which you can see in the next heading.

Extract Email Addresses from OST – Reliable Solution

Till now, you have followed various manual steps to collect your email IDs. But, it is a lengthy process to follow and you can’t extract multiple email addresses at a time. Also, it has various limitations. So, you can opt our SysTools Email Address Extractor to easily collect all your email IDs in one go. This saves time as well as improves accuracy of your work.