Friday, November 18, 2011

Outlook 2010 Export to PST - Another MS UI Screw-up

I had a need to export the entire contents of an Exchange Mailbox to a .PST and for the life of me could find NOTHING in the Outlook UI that even hinted at exporting aside from "File, Save As" which will let you save a single item as a text file.

So of course I Googled and ended up at SherWeb > How to export an Outlook 2010 pst file (Exchange 2007).

Below are the instructions provided on that site and I think they serve to prove how insanely lazy (or careless) MS is getting with Office; a fact I find interesting considering what a cash-cow it is for them.

I've highlighted the most interesting part which happens to also explain why I had to Google to do something which was incredibly obvious (even if still slightly flawed from a UX perspective) in previous versions of Outlook.

  1. Open Outlook 2010.
  2. Go to File - Open and then click on Import.
  3. Select Export to a file and then click Next.
  4. Select Outlook Data File (.pst) and then click on Next.
  5. Select the top-most folder, check the box Include subfolders and then click on Next.
  6. Click on the Browse button.
  7. Decide where you will export the .pst file and then click on OK.
  8. Click on Finish.
  9. A password box will pop up. Leave all fields blank and just click on OK

I'm not kidding. OPEN, then IMPORT to access EXPORT! You have to wonder what these people are thinking because that's a bit hard to call an oversight and beyond senseless any way you look at it. Thanks to the guys over at SherWeb for saving me the hours I might have otherwise wasted looking for this well hidden option.

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