How to Add Outlook PST to Mac Mail and Other Email Clients!

Here’s a simple guide for using PST files to import data to several email clients, such as Outlook Windows and Mac, Mac Mail, and Thunderbird. PST, short for Personal Storage table, is natively a Windows Outlook file to store emails and other kinds of items. It can be used with Mac Outlook as well for importing data. But for the rest of the clients, it’s not always straightforward.

We will discuss how you can add Outlook PST to Mac Mail as well, which is an email client that does not technically support the format.

How to Import Outlook PST to Windows Outlook

  1.  Start Outlook
  2. Go to File -> Open & Export -> Import/Export
  3. Select ‘Import from another program or file’ and click ‘Next’
  4. Select ‘Outlook Data File (.pst)’ and click ‘Next’
  5. Click on ‘Browse’ where it says ‘File to import’
  6. Browse to the PST file on your computer and select it
  7. Set the desired options for duplicate items
  8. Click ‘Next’ and select the account or the folder in Outlook where to save the contents from the PST file
  9. Click ‘Finish’

Importing Outlook PST to Windows Outlook is simple and straightforward because it’s the format native to the client. But it takes extra steps and some efforts if you want to import it to in other clients as well, like Mac Mail and Thunderbird.

How to Import Outlook PST to Outlook for Mac

Outlook for Mac uses the OLM file for data archiving and import/export, just like Outlook for Windows uses the PST format. But, even though, Mac Outlook may not allow you to archive or export the data to PST, the good news is that you can directly import data from PST in Outlook Mac.

And the process looks very similar to how you would import PST to Windows Outlook:

  • The first step is to transfer the PST files from Windows computer (where the files were created in the first place) to your Mac computer.
  • Open Outlook in Mac.
  • Go to File -> Import.
  • Select “Outlook for Windows Archive File (.PST)” and click “Continue.”
  • Browse to the location where the PST files are selected, click on them, and click “Import.”
  • Once the importing process is done, click “Finish.”

The process is same for all the Outlook for Mac versions, including 2011, 2021, 2019, and 2016 versions. The only thing to keep in mind is that Outlook for Mac cannot import ANSI-formatted PST format, also known as Outlook 97-2002 files. In the later versions of Outlook, the PST file that you get are Unicode formatted, which are compatible with Mac. But if you have older format like from Outlook 97-2002 version that are ANSI-formatted, we suggest you to create a new blank Unicode-formatted PST File in your Windows Outlook and then drag the items from the older ANSI file to the folders of a new file, and then use the new file to import to Outlook Mac.

How to Add Outlook PST to Mac Mail?

Adding Outlook PST files to Outlook Windows and Outlook Mac was relatively straightforward. The reason being that PST is the native file for Windows Outlook and Outlook Mac also supports PST format for data import. This makes it possible to just import the data using the tools’ in-built ‘import’ feature. There is no need to manually alter the format of the PST themselves.

So, if you want to add Outlook PST to Mac Mail, you cannot simply follow the similar steps as outlined above for Outlook. The recommended way is to convert the PST files to the format that can work with Mac Mail. This can be done using converter applications, like ‘PST Extractor Pro’ from USL Software.

how to add outlook pst to mac mail

You can download the tool from the link given below.

Try it: https://www.pstextractorpro.com

Here are the steps to add Outlook PST to Mac Mail using ‘PST Extractor Pro.’

  1. Download the tool and install it.
  2. Start it up and click on “Add PST.” (Also note that you have to move your Outlook PST files to your Mac machine for this method to work).
  3. Browse to the PST file and select it.
  4. Select the folders that you want to migrate to Mac Mail.
  5. Select Mac Mail as your destination. (the output format in which the tool will convert the PST file to)
  6. Click on Convert, choose the location to save the converted Mac Mail data, and wait until the conversion is finished
  7. Then open Mac Mail on your Mac computer.
  8. Choose ‘File’ -> ‘Import Mailboxes’ -> Select ‘Apple Mail’
  9. Press and hold the options key, choose ‘Go’ -> ‘Library.’ Then browse to the converted mailbox folder in step 6.
  10.  Click ‘Continue.’

Congratulations! You have successfully transferred your emails from PST to Mac Mail. You can find this data inside the folder in the ‘Mail’ sidebar called ‘Import.’

add outlook pst to mac mail

How to Add Outlook PST to Thunderbird?

Now that we know about the tool called ‘PST Extractor Pro’ that can convert PST format file into any other format, email migration doesn’t seem that difficult. ‘PST Extractor Pro’ is a Mac-OS compatible software program that you can use for converting PST files to Apple Mail, Outlook Mac, Entourage Archive, Postbox, MBOX file, EML file, and Thunderbird.

Just like we discussed above, PST file cannot be directly added to email clients other than only Outlook itself. Which means, you cannot use the default import feature in Thunderbird to import or add PST. But with the help of ‘PST Extractor Pro,’ you simply have to convert them into Thunderbird compatible format and you are good to go.

The steps for doing that are similar to the steps outlined above for converting PST to Apple Mail, with the exception of step 5. During the 5th step, choose ‘Thunderbird’ instead of ‘Apple Mail.’ And then from 7th step onwards, start ‘Thunderbird’ and import the converted mailboxes using the default import feature.

Convert pst to many other formats

add pst to mac mail

You can also convert PST to MBOX, which is compatible format for Thunderbird email client. However, unless you have other reasons for doing so, we recommend converting PST to Thunderbird Mailbox directly. The same applies for moving PST files to Mac Mail. You can convert PST to MBOX using the tool, but it is better to convert PST to Apple Mail ‘mailboxes’ instead of an archived file format.

We hope the tutorials above will help you in moving your email data effortlessly and without losing data.

outlook pst to mac mail

‘PST Extractor Pro’ has a free trial version you can download.