Hi!!
I'm Chun Sum To , a systems engineer at Dolmen (belgium) like many of my collegues posting in this blogsite.
As this is my first blogpost, do'nt expect too much of it.(although I think that what I'm writing will be very interesting in this)
Importing a pst?
If you want to get the content of a pst into an existing Exchange 2007 mailbox, you have several ways to accomplish this.
Let us look what these methods are:
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Import via the Outlook client
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Import via a temporary Exchange 2003 (like exmerge...=> no unicode support!)
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Importing via Exchange 2007???
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...
Importing via Exchange 2007 wasn't directly possible with the RTM version of it. You have to use other tools like Outlook or a previous Exchange version to accomplish this. The lack of this import possibility makes a migration more difficult than when you can directly do this with the Exchange Management Console or Shell.
Solution?
Lately Exchange 2007 SP1 (beta1) was released and one of the features are? The possibility of using Exchange Management Shell command like import-mailbox or export-mailbox to import PST's directly into Exchange 2007.
Betatesting!!
Because I have a project where a lots of pst's had to be imported into Exchange 2007, I investigated the possibility of using this beta version. I did this with a collegue Domien De Cleyn who is also working in the Dolmen Directory Services & Collaboration team.
The first issue was... using beta products in a production environment... This isn't the right way! Don't use beta products in a production environment, unless with support of Microsoft! But...the great thing about the import/export functionality is that it should be installed on a "client". I used a pc with Windows 2003 and installed Outlook 2007. The import/export is based on the import/export functionality of Outlook. After that, the Exchange 2007 SP1 beta, should be deployed on it (just the Management Console / Shell). The backend Exchange 2007 production server don't have to be upgraded into a SP1 beta state. Great... but does the SP1 beta changes anything on production? I didn't notice anything... It installs some files on the client and the shell.
Does it work???
Not directly... I used a PST of 100 MB as test. This PST was coded in Unicode.
I red the "How to import and export a pst in Exchange 2007 SP1" from the Exchange team site:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/04/13/437745.aspx
I correctly used:
import-mailbox -identity "Donald Duck" -PSTFolderPath C:\
Everything was correct... The PST was located on my C-drive. The user was created and had a mailbox in Exchange 2007.
Management Shell reported: The PST has been imported to the mailbox. But nothing was migrated. I checked the logs and event viewer for error, but I couldn't find anything.
My mailbox still was empty as before.
First I thought... beta version... perhaps the import / export doesn't work. Then I did a test export with a mailbox in Exchange 2007 and re-imported it. Surpisingly this worked! First I thought, it had something to do with my PST.. wrong format... I tested it with several other PST's, but no luck. So there must be something inside my pst... I looked hardly how to accomplish this task.
Eureka!! Exchange SP1 does work! 
The steps are:
- Create user and mailbox in Exchange / AD
- Move the pst to a specified directory (C:\) and give it the alias name of the mailbox like Dolmen.pst if Dolmen is the Alias of the user
- Do a export-mailbox Dolmen -Pstfolderpath C:\
=> This will not overwrite the existing PST... This export does a modificication of the existing pst.
- Do a import-mailbox Dolmen -pstfolderpath C:\
So, Eureka! Everything was imported. At first glance allmost all the content seems to be inside my mailbox. (except Deleted Items or Junk e-mail; It does migrate calendar, contact, inbox, sent items)
I exported this mailbox again to verify the size. This seems correct (lack of time to further testing...)
The end
Exchange 2007 SP1 (beta) can be used to import mailboxes into Exchange 2007 (RTM). Further testing is needed to make sure:
- Content is wright
- What has been modified in the pst's?? Or somewhere else?
- Does it modify anything in my production environment? (I don't want beta soft anywhere in my production...)
(By the way... This testing has been done in a lab environment to)
I'm certain that when this SP1 will be released in RTM that this functionality is fully operational.
//First blogpost!
Update 2 may:
The migration works well. (even deleted items or junk e-mail is being migrated) Be aware of language problems that may arise (English - Dutch - even other languages). To circumvent these issues, you can try to match the Exchange 2007 mailbox language with the language of the pst's.
///First blogpost!!