( Learn more about PSTs.) You’ll most often work with PSTs, but MSGs do pop up from time to time. And when Microsoft developed them in the 90s, they were a revolutionary way of storing email.
But while it’s in Outlook, it’s stored along with all your other emails, as a PST file (i.e., a file with a ‘.pst’ extension). PSTs are how Outlook stores groups of emails.Īn email gets converted into an MSG file when you move it out of Outlook. So, you have to open MSGs with Outlook or Microsoft-compatible software. And it also stores links and attachments from the email. This file stores the email text, but it also stores the email metadata – things like who sent the email, who received it and when, etc.
When you drag-and-drop an email from Outlook to a folder on your computer, it’s converted into an MSG file. Microsoft’s email client Outlook uses the MSG format (i.e., a file with a ‘.msg’ extension) to store single email messages. An MSG file is how Outlook stores single emails. If you’ve used Outlook but aren’t much of a techie, you probably aren’t quite sure what goes on behind the scenes. Microsoft Outlook stores your emails as MSGs and PSTs. For more advanced tasks like eDiscovery, choose specialized software that protects metadata and can open all MSG-types. Takeaway: For a quick check of an MSG file’s contents, use Microsoft Outlook or a reliable third-party application (e.g., GoldFynch’s MSG/PST viewer).
