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I have a problem:

There are 2 forests: resource forest A and accounts forest B. We need to migrate all mailboxes from A to B (B have AD accounts with linked mailboxes from A forest). The problem is - we have only OutlookAnywhere access to forest A. Is there a way (maybe third party tools) to migrate mailboxes from forest A, using only OutlookAnywhere access. Maybe there is a way to export A-forest mailboxes to PST, and then import to forest B? Any ideas?

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    Is there a trust in place? Why not migrate using Exchange itself?
    – DanBig
    May 5, 2014 at 13:12
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    Why wouldn't you have access to the resource forest? Please describe your scenario in some more detail. Manually exporting to PST and importing from PST of course works, but it's not fun.
    – MichelZ
    May 5, 2014 at 13:44
  • Yes, we have trust (for linked mailboxes). The reason we can't use standard Exchange migration - because we have no another access to resource forest but clients Outlook Anywhere access (443 port). So we need to find a way for extracting all mailboxes data using client connections.
    – ko4evneg
    May 5, 2014 at 13:45

1 Answer 1

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If all you truly have is "Outlook Anywhere" access, then I'd presume that you don't have access to administer the Exchange Org in Forest A.

If that's the case, then you'll need to manually migrate, which won't be fun with a lot of mailboxes.

You'll also be dealing with issues related to if you have public folders, GAL issues when it comes to replies to existing emails, certificate issues (possibly), and the list goes on.

Exporting/Importing the existing mail is the easy part actually here.

You can simply create a local PST file for the mailbox, move (or use the AutoArchive function and set it to 1 day) the email, calendar, contacts to the PST file. I would also HIGHLY suggest moving the SUGGESTED CONTACTS folder as well, since Exchange 2010 stores the autocomplete addressing now, and you won't have that without a true mailbox move.

Don't forget about resource mailboxes, shared mailboxes, etc.

Like I said above though, I hope this is a small organization and that email isn't a critical medium for them. You need to plan out the migration way beyond looking at just email.

IF you need to bulk export my recommendation would be to contact the admins of the forest the mailboxes are currently in and have them do bulk exports via Exchange Powershell (export-mailbox) for all of your mailboxes. NOW...this isn't exactly a fast thing with 3,000+ mailboxes, and it is only a point in time snapshot, so you'll want to migrate ALL the users FIRST to your new mail system, and then have the old forest Exchange admins do this bulk export and send you the mailbox PST files. You can then look at importing the PST files back into the users new mailboxes on the new Exchange org. BUT, be absolutely sure with this many users that you approach this right, especially if you think this going wrong could be disastrous for you and the company.

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  • Yes, that is true - we have not access to forest A. But the count is 3000-4000 mailboxes, is there a way to perform bulk migration?
    – ko4evneg
    May 5, 2014 at 13:55
  • I'm unaware of any tools, including 3rd party, that would do bulk migration without having access to the forest's Exchange servers directly. I've updated the bottom part of my answer though to try and help you out there.
    – TheCleaner
    May 5, 2014 at 14:02
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    @ko4evneg is there a way to perform bulk migration? Yes, the proper way, with a full Exchange migration. Since that doesn't seem to be an option, for some reason, you'll have to do it all by hand, or script something up. My advice is to make the proper way (Exchange migration) an option. May 5, 2014 at 14:03
  • 3-4k mailboxes > PST sounds like a punishment.
    – DanBig
    May 5, 2014 at 14:08
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    Get the other forest's admins to give you ONE mailbox with elevated rights and the rest can be taken care of through this: migrationwiz.com I have used these guys for several migrations and it went very well, even having only OWA access like you do. May 5, 2014 at 14:57

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