Archiving Exchange 2007 Emails

Question

I've been tasked with moving all emails older than date x from each users mailbox into the root (inbox) of a single archive mailbox. Are there commands? 3rd party tools someone can suggest? Thanks!

Answer 1

This is kind of fiddly, since (last time I checked) you need a 32-bit machine with Office and the Exchange Management tools installed. It's best done on a VM you can keep tucked away for the purpose. XP works well since it's small, but 7 will work, too.

• Install a virtual machine with 32-bit Windows XP and Outlook or Office.
• Under Add/Remove Windows Components: install the IIS Common Files via -> IIS (Details) -> Common Files (On Windows 7, this component is: IIS6 Management Console and IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility.)
• Unpack the Exchange 2007 installer and run the setup. Select Custom and Install only the Management Tools.
• Install the latest update rollup. (Best to match your actual installation here.
• Edit the HKLM\software\microsoft\exchange\exchange migration key and make sure that the user that will run the commands has full control of this key. If the key doesn't exist, then create it.
• Make sure that the same user has full access to the location to be used for the archive.

That sets up the environment. Then to run the archive:

• Run the Exchange Management Shell on the VM. You'll need to log in to this VM as something with the ability to change permissions on mailboxes, at least.

• Grant yourself full permission to the mailbox that you want to archive with:

  Add-MailboxPermission -Identity "<mailbox name>" -User "<archive user>" -AccessRights FullAccess

• Then run:

  Export-Mailbox –Identity "<mailbox name>" -PSTFolderPath <path>

The above exports a whole mailbox to a PST, but you can fiddle with the powershell command options -StartDate and -EndDate to filter by date ranges and TargetMailbox to set destination mailboxes. For multiple mailboxes, you can pipe Get-Mailbox to it.

Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266964(v=exchg.80).aspx