An old XP machine in our office still holds Outlook Express mail we need for a legal file. The lawyer wants everything as PDF with attachments noted.
The mail lives in DBX files, one per folder. What is the cleanest way to PDF these?
Convert Outlook Express email to PDF format
Solved Email & Outlook
BA
Barry Allen November 8, 2016
2 replies
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Outlook Express itself has no PDF export and no modern Windows can even open DBX files, so the work happens off that XP box.
Copy the DBX files first. In Outlook Express go to Tools, Options, Maintenance, Store Folder to find the path, usually deep inside Documents and Settings under Identities. Copy the whole folder to a USB stick, taking care to grab Folders.dbx too.
On a modern PC run a direct DBX to PDF converter such as SysTools DBX Converter with the PDF export option. It reads each DBX, writes one PDF per message with the header block intact and can embed or list attachments, which matters for your legal use since the filenames appear on the page.
For a court ready set, export with a naming pattern that includes date and subject so the PDFs sort chronologically in a folder. Most converters have this as a file naming option. It saves the lawyer from opening files one by one to find a date.
Pulled 9 DBX files off the XP machine and converted them with date_subject naming. The lawyer is happy, 2,300 PDFs all sorted by date.