In order to comply with a litigation discovery request for "all
e-mail" meeting certain criteria, I want to consolidate e-mail from
ALL of the existing PST files on my three-computer network [all XP
Pro] into a NEW SUPER.pst file [using Outlook 2003, so size limit in
earlier versions are not exceeded].  [I then plan to use ZOOT, or
something of the kind, to create a searchable database from that new
SUPER.pst file.]

FIRST:  What is the most efficient way to consolidate all of my
existing PST files into the new SUPER.pst file?

SECOND:  What is the best [affordable] software for making a
searchable database based on the new SUPER.pst AND/OR other electronic
files on my network?

THIRD:  What I ultimately need to do is to produce all e-mail [and
other electronic documents] meeting certain criteria in electronic
and/or hard copy format.  The number of e-mail/documents could run
into the thousands -- so obviously I don't want to do this "by hand". 
Is there some ingeneious [quick and easy] way to do this?

FOURTH:  I would appreciate also any thoughts re available software,
etc., not only to accomplish the above-described task on e-mail, but
one that will do the same for word documents [i.e., that will let me
locate AND THEN EXPORT OR PRINT -- as the Judge decrees] documents
meeting certain criteria on a BATCH basis with as little human
intervention as possible.

1. Export messages to a new pst (SUPER.pst) AND filter at export time
by whatever the criteria is for the messages you are interested in
(date, from, subject, etc.) - you will find the option to filter when
you export.

2. Repeat the export process for each .pst and/or mailbox that you
want to export from - allways into the SUPER.pst AND using your
filtering criteria.

3. For searching you can try the Google Desktop Search - it is free
and I have found it to be extremely useful.

I think that should cover it all at no cost...

We have a similar problem and have used the MSN Desktop Search tool
which just came out to do combined document/email search.

For this problem, it is better than google's desktop search because
you can drag and drop the results into a folder on your hard drive
which corresponds to the particular question those documents are
responding to.

If it were me, I would not try to combine all three PST folders, but
just open all three of them on the same computer, let the MSN Search
index them all and then do your search. You can search network drives
as well.

FYI:  I found out Zoot would not serve the purpose of a database for
the SUPER.pst anyway, because, among other reasons, it has a WAY too
small limitation on the number of records, and other problems [all of
which may be fixed in the next version, but not yet].

I am rejecting Google search as an option because, among other
reasons, it caused lots of problems with my system so I had to
uninstall it.

What I would really like is to get all my e-mail into a database. 
Oddly, there seem to be parsing problems with Microsoft's import and
export functions.  If I try to export from outlook, I am missing
certain fields.  If I do the reverse and try to use access to import,
also fields missing, but DIFFERENT fields.  Exporting to an
intermediate file and them importing into Access does not cure the
problem.  i am going nuts here.

Have you tried exporting to Excel > parse into fields > export/import to Access?

To jamesquest-ga:

Your suggestion works with just one not insignificant exception.  THE
DATE AND TIME field does not appear in the Excel sheet!

As you can imagine, that is pretting important!

If that problem can get cured, you will be my hero.