Exporting an Exchange mailbox to a PST file

Objective

Exporting a mailbox to a Personal Storage Table (PST) file gives you a local copy of its data. Use this copy to archive a mailbox before deleting the account, hand the data over when an employee leaves, move it to another email service, or meet a retention obligation. Microsoft Exchange at OVHcloud can export a mailbox server-side: you request the export, OVHcloud builds it, then you download a ZIP archive containing one or more .pst files, readme.md and checksum.txt. The export does not go through Outlook: the OVHcloud Control Panel and the OVHcloud API each cover the whole operation.

This feature is available for Hosted Exchange, Private Exchange and Trusted Exchange. It applies to individual mailboxes: groups, shared accounts and resource accounts cannot be exported.

This guide explains how to export an Exchange mailbox to a PST archive from the OVHcloud Control Panel or the OVHcloud API.

Requirements

• A Hosted Exchange, Private Exchange or Trusted Exchange service
• Administration rights on the service in the OVHcloud Control Panel
• Enough free local disk space for the ZIP archive and its extracted contents
• For the API method: API credentials created on the OVHcloud token generation page, with at least the GET, POST and DELETE rights on /email/exchange/*

OVHcloud Control Panel Access

• Direct link: Exchange
• Navigation path: Web Cloud > Exchange > Select your platform

Instructions

Exporting from the OVHcloud Control Panel

1. Open the Email accounts tab.

2. On the row of the mailbox to export, click ..., then Export in PST format.

   

3. In the Export in .pst format window, click Download to start the export. It runs in the background and takes between a few minutes and several hours depending on the mailbox size. You can close the window and leave the page: reopen the window at any time to see the progress, shown as a percentage.

   

4. Once the export is complete, open the same ... menu and click Export in PST format again. The download link is generated automatically, which takes 2 to 3 minutes.

   

5. When the link is ready, the window confirms that the mailbox is available in .pst format. Click Download to retrieve the ZIP archive, then extract and check it (see the Checking and opening the archive section).

   

Exporting with the OVHcloud API

The whole flow uses 2 objects: export builds the archive and reports its progress, and exportURL provides a temporary download URL. All the calls below belong to the /email/exchange section of the OVHcloud API.

Finding the path parameters

Every call needs 3 values: the organisation name, the service name and the mailbox address. The first 2 are internal names, such as ab12345-ovh, not the labels shown in the OVHcloud Control Panel. Retrieve them in order, each call feeding the next.

1. Organisation (organizationName)

List the Exchange organisations of your account with the API call below:

2. Service (exchangeService)

List the Exchange services of the organisation with the API call below:

3. Mailbox (primaryEmailAddress)

List the email accounts of the service with the API call below:

Each call returns a list of strings. If the mailbox address contains non-URL-safe characters, percent-encode them in the path (+ becomes %2B, and so on).

Requesting the export

Request the export of the mailbox with the API call below:

The call takes no body parameter and returns a task confirming only that OVHcloud registered the request:

{
  "id": 123456789,
  "function": "addExportPstRequest",
  "status": "todo",
  "todoDate": "2026-09-01T10:12:33+02:00",
  "finishDate": null
}

A task carries one of the statuses todo, doing, done, error or cancelled, and its function is addExportPstRequest, deleteExportPstRequest or generatePstUrl.

Following the progress

Read the export request to follow its progress:

{
  "creationDate": "2026-09-01T10:12:33+02:00",
  "percentComplete": 42,
  "taskPendingId": 123456789
}

Repeat this call until percentComplete reaches 100, polling at most once a minute. A 404 error means no export request exists for this mailbox: either it was never created, or it has already been removed.

Getting the download URL

The export object never returns a download URL: unlike the OVHcloud Control Panel, which generates the link for you, the API takes 2 calls.

1. Generate the URL

Create the download link, which registers a generatePstUrl task, with the API call below:

2. Read the URL

Once the task is complete, read the generated link with the API call below:

{
  "url": "https://exchange-export.storage.example/abc123/john.smith.zip?token=...",
  "expiration": "2026-09-01T11:15:00+02:00"
}

The URL is already signed: download the archive directly from it, without an authentication header. A 404 error on the GET call means the URL has not been generated yet (the generatePstUrl task is still running) or has expired.

Removing the export request

Remove the export request with the API call below:

Use it to cancel a running export, or to remove the request after downloading the archive so you can request a new one — still subject to the 24-hour limit. The call also deletes the archive on the OVHcloud side: download it first.

Checking and opening the archive

Whichever method you used, the ZIP archive contains:

Extract the archive, then compare the PST files with the hashes in checksum.txt before importing them: a truncated download produces a PST file that Outlook either refuses to open, or opens with missing data. The commands below assume a <hash> <filename> layout, one line per file.

On Windows, with PowerShell:

Get-Content .\checksum.txt | Where-Object { $_.Trim() } | ForEach-Object {
    $hash, $file = $_.Trim() -split '\s+', 2
    $file = $file.TrimStart('*')
    $actual = (Get-FileHash $file -Algorithm SHA256).Hash
    "{0,-8} {1}" -f $(if ($actual -eq $hash.ToUpper()) { "OK" } else { "MISMATCH" }), $file
}

On Linux or macOS:

sha256sum -c checksum.txt
# john.smith.pst: OK
# john.smith-2.pst: OK

If a hash does not match, download the archive again. If it still fails, request a new export.

To open the PST files in classic Outlook for Windows, go to File > Open & Export > Open Outlook Data File, then select each extracted .pst file. At the time of writing, the new Outlook for Windows does not open .pst files.

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