Email bissuh@gmail.com and you will get a reply from a person. Most answers are below.
If an archive will not open, the error message on screen names the specific reason. Including that exact wording in your email will usually get the problem solved in one reply instead of three.
Please do not send us your archive. It is your mail, we have no secure way to receive it, and we do not want a copy. If we need to reproduce something, we will ask you for the error text and the file's size and origin, never its contents.
If you are not sure whether the problem is your file or the app, open this one: demo-archive.pst (16 KB). It is a small mailbox of entirely invented correspondence: three folders, eleven messages, covering plain text, HTML and formatted bodies, with attachments. Nobody in it is real.
If the sample opens and reads correctly and your own archive does not, the error message on screen tells us which of the cases below you have hit.
On iPad or iPhone: tap the link, then Download, then find the file under Downloads in the Files app. In Upstairs, tap Open Archive… and choose it.
Google Takeout delivers Gmail as an .mbox file, usually named something
like All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox. Open it the same way as a PST, with
Open Archive… or by dragging it onto the window. Your Gmail labels appear as folders,
and "All Messages" holds everything. Apple Mail's own Export Mailbox… output
(a folder ending in .mbox) opens the same way.
The file was made by Outlook 97-2002, which used a different 32-bit layout. Upstairs
does not read it yet. If you still have access to a Windows PC with Outlook, opening the
file there and exporting a new .pst produces the modern Unicode format, which
Upstairs does read.
Outlook 2013 and later write .ost files with a page layout Upstairs does
not parse yet. It refuses by name rather than showing you a mangled archive. This is a
known gap and is on the list to fix.
Archives protected with a password set inside Outlook cannot be opened without it, and Upstairs will not attempt to guess or bypass one.
It was moved, renamed, or is on a drive that is not connected. Open it again from Open Archive… and the entry will start working again.
Some messages genuinely have no body: calendar invitations and read receipts, for instance. If a message that should have text renders blank, that is a bug we want to hear about. Tell us roughly what it was (an HTML newsletter, a plain reply, a forwarded chain) and which version of Outlook the archive came from.
Indexing runs in the background when an archive is first opened, and search only covers what has been indexed so far. On a large archive give it a few minutes. Accents and case are ignored deliberately, so cafe matches café.
That is deliberate. Remote images are blocked until you press Load Images, because loading one tells the sender's server that you opened the message. The banner at the top of the message is the switch.
You choose the destination when you export. Files are written as .eml,
which Mail, Thunderbird and most other mail clients open directly. Attachments can be
saved separately, and a whole folder can be exported at once.
Export is a Premium feature. See below.
Browsing your folders and searching the whole archive are unlimited and free, permanently. The free tier opens five messages, enough to confirm the archive really is what you think it is before you decide.
It removes the reading limit and unlocks export. It is a single one-time purchase, and there is no subscription. One purchase covers your Mac, iPad and iPhone using the same Apple Account. It is also family-shareable.
No. You buy Premium once and it stays unlocked, including on devices you buy later. Most people open Upstairs because they have one archive they need to get into, and charging a recurring fee for a job you do once would be wrong.
Use Restore Purchases in the app, and check the device is signed in to the same Apple Account you bought with. This is the normal way to get Premium onto a new device or after reinstalling, and nothing is lost. If it still does not appear, email us with the date of purchase. Not your receipt, which contains more than we need.
Apple handles all billing, so we cannot issue a refund ourselves. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. There is no subscription to cancel.
No, and it cannot: the app ships without network permission. The privacy policy shows how to verify that yourself in one command.
No. Archives are opened read-only. The app has no code path that writes to them.
Email bissuh@gmail.com. Useful things to include:
Repeated requests for the same thing are the clearest signal we get about what to build next, so it is worth writing even if you assume someone else already has.