duplicate entries in archive explorer

[James_Drake]

I have ended up with a situation of duplicated entries in archive explorer for the majority of our archives. To cut a long story short, there were unexpected issues with a move archive process. This is a small site, so to remedy a problem with orphaned shortcuts, all archives were exported to PST using the option 'all items', and then back into the vault, to the same archive, in order to recreate mailbox shortcuts that had failed to be updated by the move archive process. The broken shortcuts were then cleaned up by shortcut processing. So from an Oulook view, it all looks ok and appears to operate fine.

Archive explorer shows duplicate entries, and I know with hindsight this is because the option to remove the items from the vault first wasn't checked. Quite why EV doesnt just check that the items are already there when performing a merge PST import I don't know.

Is there any way we can now cleanup the archives so the duplicate entries are removed? Perhaps a SQL script to check and remove?

[GertjanA]

Hello James,

Those duplicate entries, are they the same, or is one of them 'closed'

You should see:

Archivename and ArchiveName [date - date]

The one with [date - date] is the closed (old) one from before the Move.

You could test, depending on where you imported the PST's too, but when the move fails, it does not automatically delete the closed archives. You need to determine which archive is currently used (Status should be Available), and delete the Closed ones.

It is possible to do this in SQL (by setting the ArchiveStatus to 4 in table Archive in Directory database) using a query to find the Closed Archives. I believe (not sure!!) that a Closed Archive has a status of 3

[James_Drake]

Its not the actual archives, it is the items within the consolidated one following a move archive + deletion of the closed one. The items have the same date and content. What happened was this:

- The move archive process was tested, we confirmed item retrieval, shortcut move was ok. The closed archive with the date range, name and status was 'closed'. The closed one was deleted and subsequent item retrieval was proven to be ok

- Due to various pressures a big bang approach was used to mass migrate all other user archives over christmas. The old ones were the same with a closed status and date range 'stamp'. Using the move archive text report files in the reports directory, there were a handful or errors against most mailboxes, but these were dismissed as corrupt data, certainly when moving tens of thousands of items per mailbox a few problems are to be expected

- All the closed ones were mass deleted

- Users complain that their shortcuts dont work. I then realise that for 90% of the moves, none of the shortcuts updated. A SQL query and EV report confirmed this

- I read there were various solutions to repair shortcuts, so I chose the PST export, reimport and removal of orphaned shortcuts - appearing the best way to do this 'on mass'. This resulted in all users having a consolidated archive each but with all items inside their mailbox duplicated, when viewed from archive explorer

The majority of users here don't even know what archive explorer/EV search is, most just double click shortcuts in Outlook. However there may be situations where duplicated items in the archive may cause future issues such as a wider adoption of these tools or a future export to PST of the archives.

So there is one shortcut in the users Outlook view, but the same item twice in archive explorer/archive.

I should also mention that this is EV 10.0.2.

[GertjanA · Accepted solution]

That explains it. Thanks.

I think this may help: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH154803
 

Please do test !

[James_Drake]

Thanks. This looks like it might do it. However, it will be a couple of weeks before the infrastructure is in a state where I can attempt this. I will report later with any findings.

[James_Drake]

I tried that tool on a test mailbox and it was 95% effective. However, we have decided not to cleanup all the mailboxes as it isn't causing a major problem to end users. Good to know for the future though where it may be more appropriate.

Thanks,

James

[GertjanA]

Hello James,

Thanks for letting us know it worked.