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I have a number of PST files created from MS Outlook 2013 on my local drive. I back these up to OneDrive. Whenever I open the PST files using Outlook OneDrive decides that they have been changed and backs up the whole file again.

How do I open the PST file for reading in Outlook without OneDrive backing up the whole file again?

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  • What happens if you set the attribute of the *.pst files to read only?
    – HighTechGeek
    Mar 10, 2017 at 16:52
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    I've often found this an annoyance myself. Setting read-only stops the files opening, at least with the pre-2013 Outlook versions I've used. There is a rather buggy freeware PST reader, which will open without updating the modification time, but I've abandoned it. The best solution I've found is to make a temporary copy and open that - slow, but nothing like as slow as an unnecessary back-up. An alternative is to suspend OneDrive, save the time-stamp using a port of the Unix touch utility, open the file, then after you've closed it restore the time-stamp, before resuming OneDrive.
    – AFH
    Mar 10, 2017 at 17:19

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You can't. When opening PST file, Outlook changes it. I personally recommend you to backup your PST to MSG files. This way you can have them on OneDrive, you can browse them and open in Outlook without changing them.

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  • Do you have any reference for how to do PST to MSG files you mention? Do you mean that I have one MSG file for each email, or am I missing something?
    – Dave Potts
    Mar 10, 2017 at 21:48
  • Yep. One MSG for each email. This way everything will work reliably. You can find many tools to export/backup Outlook mailbox to MSG files including freeware.
    – thims
    Mar 11, 2017 at 1:02
  • If you want Microsoft solution, install windows live mail. When you have outlook open drag the emails to windows live mail. Once copied over, you can export them as msg files. A little roundabout way but may be less sketchy than third party software if you like Microsoft.
    – Sun
    Mar 11, 2017 at 5:22
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After considering options from commenters I came up with a different solution. I make two copies of my archive PST files. One copy I put on OneDrive and let it back it up. The other copy I put in a separate non-backed up location and open that with MS Outlook.

I just need to be careful never to modify my viewing copy without duplicating to the OneDrive copy. My personal workflow means that this is unlikely to happen for me.

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