Import Email into Lexbe
Outlook PST MSG Native File Support for Litigation Support

If you have a Microsoft Outlook PST file with emails that you wish to import into Lexbe Online, you have two several options as how to proceed, depending on what format you'd like to work with the email and whether you want to do this yourself or have Lexbe process email as an eDiscovery Service.

The do-it-yourself options are 1) extract individual MSG email from your PST and upload directly to Lexbe Online or 2) save email as PDF files and upload yourself.

Our eDiscovery options include our 3) our converting your Outlook email and attachments to searchable PDF files and uploading to Lexbe Online,  and 4) our creating a native load file of email and attachments and uploading to Lexbe Online.  Various pros and cons of approaches will be discussed below.  Please feel free to contact our sales or customer service departments for more information as well.

Option 1: Convert PST to Individual MSG Files
A PST file is actually a container file made up of individual email MSG files. MSG files include the email message as well as attachments. Emails in the form of MSG files can be extracted from PST files and individual MSG files can be aggregated into a PST files.  In many ways the PST file is like the more familiar and ubiquitous ZIP file.

How to Extract MSG Files Using Outlook. Individual emails can be saved out of Outlook by the following procedure:

• Open the individual email in Outlook
• Click 'file'
• Click 'Save As'
• Select 'Outlook Message Type (MSG)' from the 'save as type' selection box on the bottom.
• Click 'Save'.

This method requires that you open and save the emails one at a time.

How to Extract MSG or EML Files Using Third Party Tools.  Several third party tools allow you to convert all or part of a PST file to individual MSG email files, or as EML email files, on a bulk or batch basis. These utilities are generally inexpensive and are sometimes less than $50. Here are several to consider:

• http://www.msgsave.com/
• http://www.techhit.com/messagesave/
• http://www.aid4mail.com/
• http://www.processtext.com/abcoutlk.html

Some programs give you options in how to name the files, based on metadata in the email (e.g., To, From, Subject, Date). If possible, name the MSG or EML files with a combination of these fields. This is because Lexbe uses the file name as the default title in Lexbe and an email with a title: 'John Smith, Incorporation of New Business, 2-15-06" is more helpful than the title: "Incorporation of New Business".

Viewing MSG or EML Files within Lexbe Online.  Once emails are converted to MSG format (or EML format) they can be directly uploaded to Lexbe like any other file. Our litigation search engine will index the contents of email and any attachments that are text based (e.g., Word, Excel, text-based PDFs). You can also view the email and attachments online in the Lexbe document viewer (formatted html) or by downloading to your local computer from a link on our document viewer and opening in MS Office or other applications or viewing utilities that support the specific file type.

Lexbe Online Automatically Extracts Email Metadata.  When you upload MSGs, Lexbe Online automatically extracts the following metadata from each email and writes it to the analogous Lexbe Online fields. The following fields are extracted and placed in Lexbe Online fields.

Outlook field	Lexbe Online Field
Date/Time	Date/Time
Sender	Author
To/Cc/Bcc	Recipients
Subject	Subject
	Doc Type: Email

You can see these fields by showing these columns from the 'Show Columns' selection on the left of the 'Add Case Documents', 'Browse' and 'Search' pages. You can also see these fields from the 'Disc' tab to the right on the Document Viewer under the 'General Coding' section.
Note that when importing email data that Lexbe Online assumes the sender was sending from the Eastern time zone. A future release of Lexbe Online will give the user the ability to set the time zone to be used on upload. (Outlook email stores only Universal time (aka Greenwich Mean Time) and uses local computer setting to display local time.

Option 2: Convert PST Email to PDFs Yourself
A second choice is to convert the individual emails to PDF files and save the email attachments in their native form. Tools that take this approach convert the email messages to PDF, and extract and save the email attachments in their native form. The resultant PDF emails will sometimes be linked to the attachments. Here are some tools that will convert Emails to PDFs:

• http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/
• http://www.processtext.com/abcoutlk.html

Once the PST file is converted to PDF and attachments, the files can be uploaded into Lexbe.com like any other files.

An issue with this approach is keeping the PDF emails associated with their attachments. One good solution is to use a naming convention to associate the files. So an email and its two attachments could be named as follows:
-email form Bill Smith to John Jones, 11/05/2005
-email form Bill Smith to John Jones, 11/05/2005, attach. 1
-email form Bill Smith to John Jones, 11/05/2005, attach. 2

 

Option 3: Convert PSTs with Outlook PDF+ Service
Lexbe also offers Outlook PDF+, a service that extracts email from Outlook, and converts email bodies and attachments into flattened, joined, searchable PDF files. This allows for comprehensive searching and Bates stamping at the page level of email and attachments.  Outlook PDF+ is described here.

Option 4: Create Native Load File with Native Load+
Finally, we also offer our Native Load+ service, in which we extract email and metadata from Outlook, and further recursively flatten email attachments (including recursive extraction or forwarded emails, ZIP files, etc.).  We upload the files to Lexbe Online, associate the attachments with email bodies for  review, and import email metadata (e.g., date, time, sender. subject, etc.).  You can then search and review files natively in Lexbe Online and later convert responsive documents to PDF or TIFF with load files using our Native PDF+ or Native TIFF+ services.  Alternatively you can produce files natively from Lexbe Online.  Please click  here for more information or a quote or demo.

Relative Advantages of Approaches

Here are the pluses and minuses of these approaches:

Convert Outlook Email to MSG or EML Yourself
Advantages	>Less Expensive to Process >Messages and Email linked in one file >Email metadata automatically extracted (MSGs)
Disadvantages	>File Attachments embedded within email file >No OCR of image (non-text) attachments.
Convert Outlook Email to PDF Yourself
Advantages	>Ease of use and familiarity of PDF >Attachments easier to access as saved as separate files
Disadvantages	>Manual work >Software may not convert attachments to PDF and attach email attachments to email body
Lexbe Outlook PDF+
Advantages	>Email and attachments converted to PDF and joined as a single file or separate as ordered >Most attachments OCRed and searchable >Email metadata extracted and added to Lexbe Online and Chain of Custody spreadsheet >Faster review time >Less expensive review cost >Ability to reference and Bates stamp at page level
Disadvantages	>Processing cost
Lexbe Native Review+
Advantages	>Email and attachments extracted and associated for review >Most attachments are searchable (extracted text) >Email metadata extracted and added to Lexbe Online >Faster review time >Review native files with formatted HTML in Lexbe Online and see an near-native rendition. >As needed download natives from a document viewer link and open locally. >Convert only responsive documents to PDF or TIFF, obtaining the benefit of Bates stamp at page level, while reducing processing costs.
Disadvantages	>No page-based Bates stamping until conveted to PDF

Please  contact us for more information about our services.