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Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

I get a lot of comments about what a nightmare PST's are to manage effectively and how out of control they seem to be in lots of organisations.  I've had my own challenges with PST's too, so my sympathies are with every IT manager who has this problem.

Well I've found a little script that finds out how many different PST files are on a PC, so you can export the results to a CSV file and beg the powers that be for an archiving solution.

There are a couple of options about PST's you could try having a look at the Solution Accelerator guide and make yor decision about what to do about them....

Published Friday, May 06, 2005 12:33 PM by Eileen_Brown
Filed Under: , ,

Comments

Friday, May 06, 2005 8:44 AM by Alan Fleming

# re: Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

Goodness, that's complicated.

What's wrong with dir /b /s c:\*.pst >allpsts.txt then? :-)
Friday, May 06, 2005 11:22 AM by Eileen_Brown

# re: Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

All of this scripting stuff is complicated to me :-)
You could also install SMS 2003, install the client agents on each machine, and run a scheduled software inventory and create a custom report too.
But that's rather time consuming to set up too!
Saturday, May 07, 2005 5:11 AM by Athif

# re: Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

Type the following in the command prompt;
***********************************************
dir /b /s /d Your_Drive:\*.pst >Allpsts.txt
Allpsts.txt
***********************************************
You can even create a .bat file and that's it.

Good day,
Mohammed Athif Khaleel
MVP - SUS / WSUS
Windows Server Update Services Wiki
http://www.wsuswiki.com/Athifs
I Blog on http://msmvps.com/athif/
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 4:24 AM by Melville

# re: Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

I think if you want simplicity it has to be DIR. But the script has more flexibility.
Thursday, May 12, 2005 12:51 AM by Leon

# re: Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

Well, unless you know something about DIR that I don't, you can only run it locally.

Using WMI you can query AD to get a list of all the workstations in your domain, and then run the script against each workstation. You will want to add the computers name to the CSV file, and probably generate another file showing which computers you could not connect to.

I can only see this working with DIR by placing it in the logon script, copying all the files to a central location, and then doing some fancy text manipulation to get the data into Excel... I'll go the WMI option. anyway :)
Friday, May 13, 2005 4:47 AM by subject: exchange

# Weekend reading

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