# Does your program convert mbox files to pst files?

**URL:** <https://community.metaspike.com/t/does-your-program-convert-mbox-files-to-pst-files/2749>\
**Category:** Metaspike Software\
**Created:** [September 11, 2026, 8:06pm UTC](https://community.metaspike.com/t/does-your-program-convert-mbox-files-to-pst-files/2749 "2026-09-11T20:06:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![williamson192](https://community-cdn.metaspike.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@williamson192](https://community.metaspike.com/u/williamson192)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2026, 8:06pm UTC](https://community.metaspike.com/t/does-your-program-convert-mbox-files-to-pst-files/2749/1 "2026-09-11T20:06:37Z")

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We occasionally receive mbox files in productions and need a way to review them in Outlook. Will either of your programs convert these to PST?

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**Author:** ![agungor](https://community-cdn.metaspike.com/user_avatar/community.metaspike.com/agungor/32/719_2.png) [@agungor](https://community.metaspike.com/u/agungor)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2026, 10:04pm UTC](https://community.metaspike.com/t/does-your-program-convert-mbox-files-to-pst-files/2749/2 "2026-09-11T22:04:43Z")

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Since you are working with local email data, this falls within the realm of Forensic Email Intelligence (FEI). However, instead of converting the emails for review in Outlook, FEI would replace that workflow and allow you to review the emails directly in FEI. You can deduplicate, search, filter, review, categorize (using flags), and export subsets of the emails.

We generally do not recommend the Mbox → Outlook review workflow due to the following reasons:

- When you switch from the MIME (Mbox) realm to MAPI (PST), forensic integrity takes a big hit. Email data and metadata are now substantially different, and many investigative / authentication techniques such as DKIM / ARC verification are unavailable.
- Outlook has limited search capabilities. Both in terms of search syntax, file type support for attachments, and giving feedback regarding what is not searchable.
- Reviewing emails in Outlook is inherently risky if you are not careful. If a reviewer is not on an airgapped computer, it is all too easy to accidentally fire off a read receipt, load a beacon image, etc.
- Outlook is not designed as a legal review tool. As such, it doesn’t have the review tool niceties such as bulk tagging documents, filtering on multiple tags with Booleans, re-exporting document subsets while preserving metadata, etc. While it is a very capable email client, it is a blunt instrument for legal review.