Apple Mail to Pst Converters, Free or Paid?

Looking for Apple Mail to Pst converters free? Here's what you need to know about free and paid converters.

I received this question yesterday in my inbox from one of my readers.

“I am looking to buy Windows PC, and sell my Mac on ebay. But I am not sure how to move the emails from Apple Mail to Windows Outlook. I know that Pst files can come to my use. Are there any Apple Mail to Pst converter free? Or should I go for paid versions? My database is huge, so that's why I am finding it hard to use free tools. I did try one or two and they really didn't work out. If you know any, please let me know. Or if there is any other method that I can bring to my use.”

Here's what I wanted to reply to the sender of this email. But then I realized that this question is asked very frequently. So, I turned it into a post so all of you can know what to do when looking for Apple Mail to Pst converters, free or paid.

Answer -

It is always a little challenging to move the data from Windows to Mac, or from Mac to Windows. It evens even trickier when you try to move email data, such as from Apple Mail to Windows Outlook.

You are right that you are going to need an Apple Mail to Pst converter. Because Pst file is a Windows Outlook format that you can import to Outlook database. However, the question that whether you should go for free Apple mail to Pst converters or paid ones is slightly trickier to answer.

It all depends on what you want to do and the extent of your database. To generalize it, these are the situations where you can take the risk of using free converters -

•    Your database is not so huge.

•    Or, you don't want to convert all the folders, just some selected ones.

•    There are not many attachments, embedded images, or any other graphical data inside your emails because you are bound to lose them or modify them during conversion through free tools.

•    You can afford to give a little more time for this.

•    You do have a little prior knowledge of email migration, and are fine with hard to use tools.

In short, free Mac Mail to Pst converters work fine for just one or two folder conversion. They offer a decent solution for not so serious data migration.

In all other cases, free converters can be a little pain in the neck. Your situation is not at all fit to use them. The exact reason is because you are making a full switch from Mac to Windows, and from Mac Mail to Windows Outlook. And you clearly specified that your database is huge. So clearly, free converters wont' be effective at all.

You can lose your graphical data that is embedded within email body, such as any kind of image, graphs, charts, bar diagrams etc. Many users here are concerned with the office data, and not personal data, and that's the exact reason why going through the free software would be a bad idea.

Email migration is still a relatively small industry, with no big named companies offering their solutions. Certainly, there isn't any viable solution offered by Apple Mail or Windows Outlook. Furthermore, developing tools that can extract the data from Apple mail and convert it into Pst, which is generally for Windows OS, it can be very tough. You can say that it is highly niche industry, and the solutions are custom made with sophistication. Big companies even hire developers to make such email migration tools that is custom-built for their personal and very specific needs, and is to used only once.

That's the reason why isn't there any free converters, at least, not the effective ones.

In most cases, I would advise to buy these Apple Mail to Pst Converters. A little money can save you a lot of frustration and time down the road. Also, I have explained above in which cases you CAN at least try free converters.

In my experience, “Mail Extractor Pro” is a very good software program for this task. It helps you convert Apple Mail to Pst files with high accuracy and speed. It also has a graphical interface that is very user-friendly and efficiently.

You can download the free trial version here to try it out. But to convert all the data, you are going to need to purchase the full license, since the free trial version is, obviously, limited in some ways. Actually, it is limited in only way and that is that it converts only 10 items from each folder.

I am sure this solution will work out for you, and for all others who are reading this.