Quirk with importing Outlook PST files into Exchange 2007

by ron on April 11, 2008

I just ran into a quirk with the “import-mailbox” Powershell cmdlet from Ex2007 SP1.

I found that if I was trying to import an existing PST created using Outlook 2003 to an Exchange 2007 mailbox, it claimed that everything worked just fine, but none of the content appeared in the mailbox.

The fix is to first do an “export-mailbox” of the Ex2007 mailbox over the top of the PST which you want to import.

Export-Mailbox -Identity fred “PSTFolderPath: c:\PSTs\fred.pst

This will merge the content (if any) of the existing Ex2007 mailbox into the PST, without overwriting the contents of the PST.
The nice thing about this step though is that it converts the format of the PST into a format which the import-mailbox command will understand.

You then run the “import-mailbox” command, and it will successfully import the contents the Outlook PST file.

Import-Mailbox -Identity fred “PSTFolderPath: c:\PSTs\fred.pst

Also, remember that in order to do an import or export, the admin account you are using will need full access permission to the mailboxes in question.
You do this with the command:

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity [email protected] -User “internaldomain.com\AdminAccount” -AccessRights FullAccess

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Raji A May 5, 2008 at 7:17 pm

An export was not required when you create the psts from using exmerge.
I have used exmerge to get psts from Exchange 2003 and imported them into Exchange 2007 with no problems.

Must be an issue with the outlook pst creation.

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Richard Eisenman April 16, 2009 at 8:55 pm

Had the same experience with PSTs produced by MailRecovery (an app of officerecovery.com) from Exchange 2000 db files.

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Mark Gerlow June 22, 2009 at 4:37 am

Raji: I’ve done that a few times, but having problems with replying to old emails. Users get an error, that the exchange server dosent exist? When looking in the header, it refers to the old exchange server. Do you know how to fix?

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Adom Watson April 22, 2013 at 10:45 pm

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