Let me introduce you to PST files. Ah, you’ve met already? Space eating email files that waste your fileservers space? I’m sure we’re talking about the same phenomenon.
In part 3 of this series on Exchange 2010 Archiving, PST files get moved out of the way and into the archive mailbox, where they belong. This can be acomplished in 2 ways:
- Let an administrator do the job
- Let the users do the job
How? Read on!
0. Set up your Exchange environment.
Part 1 in this series on Exchange 2010 SP1 archiving talks about setting up our Exchange environment to make it ready for archiving. It is a prerequisite to follow part 1 first.
1. First things first, get the right permissions
To export or import mailboxes or PST files, you will need to have the mailbox import/export right. This has to be configured as follows in the EMS:
New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role "Mailbox Import Export" –User Administrator
2. Create a file share
Exchange does only support importing and exporting of mailboxes and PST files from or to a network path. Create a network share and grant the “Exchange Trusted Subsystem” modify rights.
3. Import the PST files
Option 1: Let an administrator do the job (Read: Bulk Import PST files with the Exchange Management Shell)
Using the Exchange Management Shell, you are able to import a PST into an archive. I’ve created a couple of one-liners that let you bulk-import PST files. For this to work the actual PST files will need to have the same name as the Exchange Alias of the user.
Dir \\path\to\PST\archive\*.pst | %{ New-MailboxImportRequest -Name PSTImport -BatchName Imports -Mailbox $_.BaseName -FilePath $_.FullName -IsArchive}
For single import actions use the following cmdlet:
New-MailboxImportRequest -Name Import1 -Mailbox UserName -FilePath <a href="file://\\path\to\archive.pst">\\path\to\archive.pst</a> -IsArchive
Use the Get-MailboxImportRequestStatistics cmdlet to monitor the import.
Option 2: Let users import their archive using Outlook 2010
When users have their PST archive and their personal (online) archive in Outlook, they can also use drag and drop to copy / move messages to their archive.
Back to Exchange 2010 Archiving Guide Index.
