Search Through Email Folders, Messages, and Attachments

How PowerGREP Handles Email

PowerGREP supports the PST and OST file formats used by Outlook 97 through Outlook 2016, the DBX file format used by Outlook Express, and the MBOX format used by Mozilla Thunderbird and most UNIX/Linux mail servers and clients. To enable this support, set “archive formats to search inside” on the File Selector panel to any configuration with “mailboxes” in its label. Then PowerGREP treats PST, OST, DBX, and MBOX files as folders that contain your mail folders and mail messages.

If you set “file formats to convert to plain text” to any configuration labeled “attachments” then email messages too appear as folders in PowerGREP. Inside each email message you’ll see a file with the email’s body text and another with the basic email headers. For multi-part MIME messages you’ll see separate files for all the parts. Body text in HTML or RTF can be converted to plain text or kept as HTML or RTF, as you prefer. If the email has attachments, each attachment is treated as a separate file. Attachments in proprietary file formats such as DOC or PDF files are handled just like actual files in proprietary formats. All the predefined configurations for handling attachments convert them to plain text. This way you can search through all the text in your email, whether it’s in the email’s body text or in an attachment.

Because PowerGREP treats email attachments as files, you can use any of PowerGREP’s features for copying files to extract the attachments your looking for from your email and save them as actual files or place them into an archive.

If you set “file formats to convert to plain text” to any configuration not labeled “attachments” then email messages appear as plain text files in PowerGREP. This allows you to quickly search through the basic headers and the body text of your email. PowerGREP converts the body text to plain text if needed.

PowerGREP can also search through email messages individually stored in Outlook MSG files or MIME EML filers. Just like emails inside mailboxes, MSG and EML files can appear either as folders containing the email headers, body, and attachments as separate files or as a single file containing the basic headers and body text of the email.

Get Your Own Copy of PowerGREP Now

There are two ways in which you can get your own copy of PowerGREP and evaluate the software risk-free.

The best option is to buy your own copy of PowerGREP for US$ 159. Your purchase is covered by Jan Goyvaerts's personal three month risk-free unconditional money-back guarantee. This allows you to try the software without any limitations and without any risk for three months.

Alternatively, you can download the free evaluation version of PowerGREP. The free evaluation version can be downloaded anonymously. It allows you to explore PowerGREP for 15 days of actual use. Full documentation is included. The documentation extensively covers both PowerGREP itself, and the regular expression syntax.