MS Outlook keeps emails on user’s hard drive in PST files. This format contains email information coded in such a way that it can’t be read outside of its native mail client.
You can view their content only using special PST viewers that will decode your PST email storage and show the texts of messages.
There are a few important features that a PST mail viewer should have:
- Clean user interface
- Easy navigation through emails
- Ability to view emails in their original formatting, in HTML or text
- Ability to print selected messages
- Fair price (the best price for viewing is zero)
There are several popular programs for reading emails from a PST file used in MS Outlook. Here are my Top 5.
- Kernel Outlook PST Viewer
It is only for viewing emails in text format and hard to understand what each UI icon does (there are no hints) until you hover on them. There are no printing or other additional options available. - PSTViewer Lite
It opens files in PST, OST, EML, MSG and MHT formats and also support email reply (using your default mail client) and printing. Sometimes, it freezes when trying to print emails.
It’s free only for 15 days, the license costs $29.14 - SysTools Outlook PST Viewer
This program opens emails in text view and allows viewing the list of attachments. It is freeware, and it lacks any additional features like printing or generating mail summary.
If you need a tool only for reading emails from PST, this one is a good match. - CoolUtils Outlook Viewer
It features resizable mail viewer, can print emails in batch and displays them in both text and HTML. Additionally it offers reports about selected emails that can be saved into various formats. This is the most functional freeware Outlook viewer. - PST File Reader Free takes too long to recover mail history from a PST file. In our tests it offered to recover, and after pressing ‘Start recovery’, the program disappeared and nothing happened. This will definitely not work for easy viewing Outlook emails.