Forum Discussion

John_Santana's avatar
John_Santana
Level 6
12 years ago

Completely exporting emails from the archived exchange server mailbox

Hi People,

Does exporting the archived mailbox from Enterprise Vaults includes all email items in the existing Exchange Server 2007 mailbox as well ?

or just the archived items only ?

I need to export bulk mailboxes into PST as my company financial department has been bought by the larger company and I need to export all of the people email objects.

 

Basics
Best Practice
Enterprise Vault
Information Governance
  • GertjanA's avatar
    GertjanA
    12 years ago

    Hello John,

    Let's start from the beginning. I have been in the same excercise a few times now.

    It depends on the number of mailboxes really.

    Possibility 1 -

    Few users (let's say less than 100). Disable them from archiving. Put their mailboxes in 1 store on the Exchange Server. Restore all items from the archive back to the mailbox. (make sure store has enough space). Export mailbox to PST (remove shortcuts from mailbox), delete mailbox. This gives you 1 PST

    Possibility 2 -

    Disable users from archiving. Export archives to PST (PST1). Export mailboxes to PST (PST2) (remove shortcuts). There is no possibility to combine the exports into 1 PST.

    Possibility 3 -

    Use 3rd part tool (TransVault) to export archives to PST. Not sure if you can also export mailboxes to PST using TV. This is an option that should be considered if you have many mailboxes to process.

    We've been moving mailboxes to other environments using Quest, TransVault, Exchange native Move Mailbox, and PST export/import. Using a 3rd party migration tool has preference (despite costs) because most tools have good reporting and retrying failed items possibilities. And, for Exchange move, you do need a trust one way or the other.

    Does this help?

11 Replies

Sort By
  • GertjanA's avatar
    GertjanA
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    Hello John,

    Exporting archive is only archive. You will have to use Exchange tool to export the mailboxes themselves.

    Be advised that it might be wise to use EV to remove the shortcuts from the archived mailboxes. Create seperate provisioning group, set users to be migrated in this group, and set mailboxpolicy to remove shortcuts older than 1 day.

    This way, the exported mailboxes do not contain EV shortcuts, and then there will be no issue in the new environment for these mailboxes (ie users clikcing shortcuts, not working)

  • John_Santana's avatar
    John_Santana
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Gertjan, many thanks for the advice so in this case by following your guidance, I can just export from Enterprise Vault 8 all in one go rather than have to export from Exchange Server and then Export again from EV ?

    "set users to be migrated in this group" does this means that if the users must still exist in the AD ?

  • JesusWept3's avatar
    JesusWept3
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    The only way you could really do it would be through a third party migration utility
    so for instance in TransVault you can export archives and exchange mailboxes to PST files
    Other third party utilities most likely will be able to do that also

  • John_Santana's avatar
    John_Santana
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Thanks for the reply Jesus,

    So in this case if I use the third party application then it can be exported all in one go as one PST per user.

    Because what I think is that if I have to provision the archived mailbox again in EV, that means the EV partition will grow bigger as it copies everything from Exchange Server into the EV server.

    cmiw ?

  • GertjanA's avatar
    GertjanA
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    Hello John,

    Let's start from the beginning. I have been in the same excercise a few times now.

    It depends on the number of mailboxes really.

    Possibility 1 -

    Few users (let's say less than 100). Disable them from archiving. Put their mailboxes in 1 store on the Exchange Server. Restore all items from the archive back to the mailbox. (make sure store has enough space). Export mailbox to PST (remove shortcuts from mailbox), delete mailbox. This gives you 1 PST

    Possibility 2 -

    Disable users from archiving. Export archives to PST (PST1). Export mailboxes to PST (PST2) (remove shortcuts). There is no possibility to combine the exports into 1 PST.

    Possibility 3 -

    Use 3rd part tool (TransVault) to export archives to PST. Not sure if you can also export mailboxes to PST using TV. This is an option that should be considered if you have many mailboxes to process.

    We've been moving mailboxes to other environments using Quest, TransVault, Exchange native Move Mailbox, and PST export/import. Using a 3rd party migration tool has preference (despite costs) because most tools have good reporting and retrying failed items possibilities. And, for Exchange move, you do need a trust one way or the other.

    Does this help?

  • John_Santana's avatar
    John_Santana
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Gertjan,

    Wow that's an eye opener, yeah you finally got me thinking that I can move all of the users that I want to export into the 0Day archive so that the mailbox are all in the EV, and then from EV I can just export them, but obviously it will take some time over the weekend to do the archving and then doing the export.

    The only problem with the approach above is that the Enterprise Vault will be archiving all of the items into the VaultStore.

  • GertjanA's avatar
    GertjanA
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    Hi John,

    I do not consider that a 'problem'. Remember that the SIS and compression of Enterprise Vault will result in lesser Exchange Storage, and MUCH better storage use in EV.

    If you go the way of 0-day archiving, think about the Deleted ITems folder, that is NOT archived by default (you can set that in the advanced properties of the policy). Als check on the Export to PSt option what fields you can use to export. When I did this excercise, I made a list of users to be exported, and set the State Field in AD to a certain value (like EXPORTME). In the export to PST wizard, you can then look for that value, and export batches (or all in 1 go).

    If you think your question is resolved, can you mark one as solution?

    Thanks, and enjoy the ride :-)

     

  • johnfrankel's avatar
    johnfrankel
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    First you try some methods like Migrate Exchange to Exchange, Export or Import mailboxes to PST

    Export or Import mailboxes to PST files the following requirements must be Fullfil:

    • outlook installed ( mapi32.dll )
    • exchange management tools installed.
    • outlook must be installed on the client machine.

    Running cmd-let to export a mailbox to a PST file:

    Export-Mailbox –Identity <mailboxUser> -PSTFolderPath <pathToSavePST>

    Import-Mailbox -Identity <mailboxUser> -PSTFolderPath <PSTFileLocation>

    For more information about Export and Import mailboxes to PST files visit : http://exchangeserver.tumblr.com/post/40168523995/how-to-migrate-edb-to-pst-with-the-help-of-exmerge

    Hope that helps,

  • johnfrankel's avatar
    johnfrankel
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    First, you try to some menual methods like Migrate Exchange to Exchange, Export and Import mailboxes to PST files and some other methods.

    • Outlook installed ( mapi32.dll )
    • Exchange management tools installed.
    • Running the task must be an Exchange Organization Admin

    Run following cmd-let :

    To export the contents of your Exchange mailbox into a .pst file

    Export-Mailbox –Identity <mailboxUser> -PSTFolderPath <pathToSavePST>

    To importing mailbox contents from a PST file

    Import-Mailbox -Identity <mailboxUser> -PSTFolderPath <PSTFileLocation>

    For more information about Export and Import mailboxes to outlook : http://exchangeserver.tumblr.com/post/40168523995/how-to-migrate-edb-to-pst-with-the-help-of-exmerge

    I hope that helps.