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?

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

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?