Have you forgotten
password of a PST file? Are you looking for removing the password from a PST
file to access its contents?
MS Outlook gives users
an option to password protects the PST files again unauthorized access.
However, at times one might forgot the password of PST file and might want
to for remove or reset the password to access it. Though, directly without
a third party utility it is not possible to remove the password. However, a
workaround is there to resolve this issue. Microsoft released a utility to pst19upg.exe
to repair old versions of pst files and make them compatible with latest
outlook software’s. It also removes password during the upgrade process.
However, this only works with old pst files saved in outlook 2002 and
lower as it used ANSI format for storage of emails in pst format. Newer
pst files from outlook 2003 and higher versions started using unicode format
and it will not have any effect on those. You might have to look for some
professional program for removing password from a pst file created using
outlook 2003 or higher. You may follow the steps below for removing password
using pst19upg.exe:
- Download and save pst19upg.exe
- Quit outlook
- Navigate to location of
password protected pst file and copy it to an alternate location as backup
of original if something goes wrong
- It is recommended to run
Scanpst.exe tool to repair any errors from the target pst file before
proceeding further.
- Copy the password protected pst
file and pst19upg.exe tool in a single folder on desktop
- Open an elevated command prompt
- Now type command: pst19upg.exe -x filename.pst
- For example:
“C:\Users\<username>\desktop\pst19upg.exe” -x backup.pst
- Note: Where username is the
name of user logged in computer and backup.pst is the filename of password
protected pst file
- Upon process completion, a new
file with .psx extention will be created
- Navigate to the folder and
rename the pst file to something else like oldbackup.pst
- Again go to command prompt
again and type command: pst19upg.exe -i filename.psx
- For
example: “C:\Users\<username>\desktop\pst19upg.exe” -i
backup.psx
- Note: Where username is the
name of user logged in computer and backup.pst is the filename of password
protected pst file
- Upon completion, it will create
a new pst file with same name as original pst and no password.
- It is recommended to run Scanpst.exe again on the resulting pst file to repair any errors
- You may add the pst file to outlook