I have over 10GBs of orphaned and unwanted mailboxes sitting in the storage of an Exchange 2003 server. Some of the accounts for these mailboxes have already been deleted. Will exmerge give me the ability to safely copy these mailboxes to PST files before finally deleting the mailboxes? 1) Can this be done WHILE exchange is still running and without hurting outlook users? 2) Is there a way to copy all of them to their own individual PSTs instead of doing this one by one? What are the proper steps?

Hi, yes using exmerge on an exchange server you are able to create a pst file for each mailbox you want. 1) yes exmerge works on a mounted database 2) for each user one pst file is created. Please remember that the max. size of the pst-file is 2GB. If you use exmerge this may affect other useres on that serrver because the Exchaneg database has a high load. regards Thomas Paetzold visit my blog on: http://sus42.wordpress.com

If I highlight an entire list of mailboxes, will exmerge create a new pst for each mailbox? After the PST is create for a mailbox, how do I get rid of it? Do I simply delete and purge it?

hi, yes after exporting the containt you have to delete the mailboxes manually this is not done by exmerge. If I remeber correctly I used exmerge as a commandline veresion. So i dont know if there is a UI verrsion out there. (sorry its a long time ago I administered an exchange 2003 server) regards Thomas Paetzold visit my blog on: http://sus42.wordpress.com

ExMerge has a limited GUI but it is a GUI none the less and you can download in from here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2743here is a visual of how to with ExMerge http://www.rackspace.com/apps/support/portal/6159The major thing to remember here is the ExMerge using the ANSI PST format so that means that PST are only supported up to 2GB in size and really I would not recommend going over 1.8GB. Additionally ExMerge will NOT tell you if you go over the limit nor will it spawn a new PST instead it will just corrupt the PST and say nothing. So as part of the process you need to A. Consider exporting data by date range to keep the PST's small and B. Validate every PST before you kill off the mailboxes. As an alternative you can check out Lucid8's DigiScope http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp which will allow you to do everything ExMerge can do and more, i.e. very robust GUI and DigiScope can open Offline Exchange Databases (ExMerge cannot) of any version allowing you to Browse, Search, Export Mailboxes, Folders & Individual Items to PST & MSG or to recover directly from an offline Exchange Database into a Production server, even cross version i.e. 2003-->2007-->2010 etc. Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope

ExMerge has a limited GUI but it is a GUI none the less and you can download in from here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2743here is a visual of how to with ExMerge http://www.rackspace.com/apps/support/portal/6159The major thing to remember here is the ExMerge using the ANSI PST format so that means that PST are only supported up to 2GB in size and really I would not recommend going over 1.8GB. Additionally ExMerge will NOT tell you if you go over the limit nor will it spawn a new PST instead it will just corrupt the PST and say nothing. So as part of the process you need to A. Consider exporting data by date range to keep the PST's small and B. Validate every PST before you kill off the mailboxes. As an alternative you can check out Lucid8's DigiScope http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp which will allow you to do everything ExMerge can do and more, i.e. very robust GUI and DigiScope can open Offline Exchange Databases (ExMerge cannot) of any version allowing you to Browse, Search, Export Mailboxes, Folders & Individual Items to PST & MSG or to recover directly from an offline Exchange Database into a Production server, even cross version i.e. 2003-->2007-->2010 etc. Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope

It didn't work. I made sure the mailbox was under 1.8GB and got a bunch of errors: **************************************************************** Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Merge Program, v6.5.7529.0 Start Logging:June 09, 2012 23:20:23 **************************************************************** [23:20:23] Logging Level: None [23:20:23] Reading settings from file 'D:\Exchange\bin\EXMERGE.INI'. [23:20:24] Error 8007203a opening an LDAP connection. ('LDAP://EXCHANGE01/rootDSE') (CADRoutines::GetNamingContextData) [23:20:24] Accessing Domain Controller 'HQAD2K3-2' [23:20:25] 'EXCHANGE01' is running Exchange Server 2000 or later [23:20:25] Source server read from settings file is 'EXCHANGE01'. [23:20:25] Reading list of subjects for messages to be selected from file '' [23:20:25] Reading list of attachment names for messages to be selected from file '' [23:20:25] List of folders to be ignored has been read. 0 folders in the list. [23:20:25] Current machine locale ID is 0x409 [23:20:25] Operating System Version 5.2 (Build 3790) [23:20:34] Error 8007203a opening an LDAP connection. ('LDAP://EXCHANGE01/rootDSE') (CADRoutines::GetNamingContextData) [23:20:34] Accessing Domain Controller 'HQAD2K3-2' [23:20:34] 'EXCHANGE01' is running Exchange Server 2000 or later [23:20:39] Mailbox '/o=conexant/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=EXCHANGE01/cn=Microsoft System Attendant' will be ignored as its DN contains strings in the ignore list [23:20:39] Mailbox '/o=conexant/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Configuration/cn=Connections/cn=SMTP (EXCHANGE01)/cn={86A6FE81-E095-4834-8D22-CABAE8EDEAF3}' will be ignored as its DN contains strings in the ignore list [23:20:39] Mailbox '/o=conexant/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/cn=SystemMailbox{86A6FE81-E095-4834-8D22-CABAE8EDEAF3}' will be ignored as its DN contains strings in the ignore list [23:20:40] Found 109 mailbox(es) homed on database 'FIRST STORAGE GROUP/MAILBOX STORE (EXCHANGE01)'. [23:20:40] Ignored 3 mailbox(es) homed on database 'FIRST STORAGE GROUP/MAILBOX STORE (EXCHANGE01)'. [23:20:40] Found 109 mailbox(es) homed on the specified databases. [23:20:40] Ignored 3 mailbox(es) homed on the specified databases. [23:21:04] Using attribute 'PR_MESSAGE_DELIVERY_TIME' for date operations. [23:21:04] Merging data into target store. The program will copy only those messages that do not exist in the target store. [23:21:04] Associated folder data will NOT be copied to the target store. [23:21:04] Using 'English (US)' (0x409) as the default locale (Code page 1252) [23:21:04] All mailboxes will be processed, regardless of locale [23:21:04] Using default locale for all mailboxes [23:21:04] Initializing worker thread (Thread0) [23:21:04] Copying data from mailbox 'Bryan James' ('B.JAMES') on Server 'EXCHANGE01' to file 'F:\EXTRACTED\B.JAMES.PST'. [23:51:26] Error copying messages from folder '\Inbox' (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:26] Trying to copy messages in folder '\Inbox', individually. To avoid duplicates in the target store, messages will be merged and not copied into the target store. [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'CMO Trade' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'RE:' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'Fw: 7/9/09' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'Re:' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'FW: town' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'RE: ' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) [23:51:40] Error copying message with subject 'Redaction' in folder '\Inbox'. (MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION) What is wrong?