DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor Review: Is It Worth Using for Bulk Attachment Extraction?

It’s easy to extract a few attachments out of Outlook. Getting hundreds or thousands out, that’s another story.

Outlook PST files with years’ worth of emails can take hours to open each message and save the attachments one by one. Also, it’s difficult to keep track of what files are already saved. This is where dedicated PST attachment extraction software comes in handy.

In this review I take a deeper look at DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor and its suitability for bulk attachment extraction. This is not simply a list of features, but the things that really matter in practice: ease of operation, capability for bulk processing, ability to handle attachments, performance, accuracy, advantages and limitations.

The main question is simple: Is DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor worth to use when you need to extract a large number of Outlook attachments?

Overview

DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor is a Windows utility to extract attachments stored within Outlook PST files.

Instead of opening each email thru Outlook, users can provide a PST file and extract the attachments separately. This can be useful when an old mailbox has invoices, contracts, reports, images, spreadsheets, PDFs, presentations and other important files.

The software is mainly designed to cut down on repetitive manual tasks. You can extract them in bulk rather than spend time going thru each email one by one.

Why Bulk Attachment Extraction Is Important

Volume is the biggest reason to use an attachment extractor.

Consider an employee with a 5-year-old PST archive of tens of thousands of emails. Key documents be spread out over hundreds or thousands of messages. It would be hard enough to find each attachment by hand, and saving them one at a time would take even longer.

Bulk extraction can be useful in situations such as:

• Retrieving business documents from legacy email archives
• Migration: preparing attachments.
• Backing up your document separately
• Invoice and financial records extraction
• Reclaimed project files from archived mailboxes
• How to restore useful files from old PST backups
• Cut down on time opening individual messages

For small jobs, manual extraction may be quite sufficient. Automation becomes a lot more feasible with bigger PST files.

Main FeaturesPST Attachment Extractor

The software is used mainly for extracting attachments from Outlook PST Files.

This is useful when the email itself is no longer the main requirement and the user needs only the files that were attached to messages.

For example, instead of looking an old mailbox for each and every PDF invoice, users can extract the attachments, and work with them directly from a normal Windows folder.

Bulk-Processing

Perhaps the most important feature of this kind of software is the ability to extract in bulk.

Instead of saving attachments one at a time, users can process a number of emails and pull out the attachments all together. This can save you a lot of repetitive work when working with large mailboxes.

Support for Various Types of Attachments

Attachments to Outlook can take many forms. A typical PST might include:

• PDF files
• Word files
• Excel sheets
• PowerPoint has
• Pictures
• .zip files
• Textfiles
• Other papers in business

The tool is able to extract different types of attachments, which makes it suitable for general-purpose mailbox processing rather than a single file category.

Selective Extraction

not everyone needs all attachments.

A mailbox can be stuffed with years of images, signatures, promotional papers and other junk. Selective extraction enables users to focus on the data they really need, and not create an output folder that is too large.

My Experience With the Extraction Process

The general workflow is pretty straightforward.

A typical extraction procedure includes:

1. Launch DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor.
2. Select the Outlook PST file you want.
3. Scan the mailbox data with the software.
4. Choosing the right extraction options.
5. Choosing a place to output to.
6. Beginning the extraction.
7. Reviewing the files of the created attachment.

Easier to understand the process than manually sifting thru a large Outlook archive.

The simple workflow is an advantage for users who are familiar with Windows applications, but don’t have experience with advanced Outlook administration.

Performance: How Does It Handle Bulk Extraction?

PST is a major performance factor in itself.

Obviously, a small PST with only a few emails and a few attachments will be processed faster than a multiple archive with hundreds or thousands of messages.

Factors such as these can affect extraction speed:

• PST file size
• Number of emails
• Number of attachments
• Attachment sizes
• Computer processor and memory
• Hard Drive vs SSD Performance
• Space Available

Thus, it would be misleading to say that all PST will be processed within the same time.

Larger extraction jobs still take some patience. The main advantage is that the software does away with the repetitive task of opening messages and saving files manually.

Accuracy and Data Handling

With business or archival data, accuracy is important than speed.

The output should be usable files, with the original file type and file name preserved as much as possible.

I would recommend checking a representative sample of the output after a large extraction. Open some PDF, Word docs, spreadsheets, images and other extracted files for instance.

This simple check is especially important when working with old PST files or important business records.

It is also recommended that the original PST file should remain untouched until the extraction has been verified.

Ease of Use

One of the good things about DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor is that the basic workflow does not require users to know the internal structure of PST file.

The process is basically:

Select PST → Select extraction settings → Select output folder → Extract

That simplicity matters when the goal is simply to save attachments.

For advanced Outlook users, not much explanation is required, while less technical users can usually follow the workflow without having to deal with complicated mailbox configuration.

Pros

• Specifically designed for Outlook PST attachment extraction
• Supports bulk extraction of attachments
• Cuts down repetitive manual work
• Managing large email archives
• Support for different attachment types
• Simple workflow
• Can be helpful for business and personal PST archives

Cons

• Windows-based application

The limitations aren’t necessarily deal breakers. Their usefulness is largely dependent on the size and complexity of the extraction job.

Conclusion

So, is DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor good for Bulk Attachment Extraction?

It can be a practical choice for large PST files. The main advantage is not just that it can save attachments, but rather it reduces the manual effort needed to collect a large number of files from Outlook archives.

The software is most useful when you’re working with hundreds or thousands of attachments. Outlook's built-in options are perfectly adequate for a few files.

Before you do a major extraction, back up your PST, make sure you have enough storage space for the output, and check a sample of the extracted files.

Overall, DataVare Outlook Attachment Extractor is worth considering if your actual requirement is bulk Outlook PST attachment extraction. It is more convenient than saving attachments manually from a large mailbox because of its simple workflow and batch processing focus.

David Mithen is an Seo professional and content writer specializing in email migration, data recovery, and cloud solutions. He creates informative articles, software reviews, and step-by-step guides that help users.