Summary: The guide explains the pain points and risks associated with multiple mailbox export for an Exchange admin. In addition, it mentions two different solutions to help the admin export multiple Exchange mailboxes to PST file format safely in Exchange 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007.
As an Exchange administrator, you must have exported single Exchange mailbox to PST file quite a number of times. It?s quite easy. But have you ever tried exporting multiple mailboxes to PST at once?
If yes, then you probably know about the challenges and risks. For those who didn?t, well there?s always a risk that the export process may get stuck or fail. Also, sometimes bulk export may cause issues, which can lead to PST file corruption and data loss. Especially, if you trying to export large mailboxes. Moreover, you don?t get much control over PST export once initiated.
One way to overcome these issues and risks is to export each mailbox separately in PST format. But this requires Exchange admin to repeat the same steps multiple times for each mailbox to export multiple Exchange mailboxes.
This is not only a time consuming and tedious task but can also lead to errors as you need to enter details of each mailbox every time.
However, there?s an easier way to export all mailboxes from multiple Exchange databases to PST format with help of an EDB to PST converter software, such as Stellar Converter for EDB. The process of exporting mailboxes to PST is completely safe and mostly automated with the help of this software.
Method 1: Using Exchange Management Shell
Before You Begin
- Open Exchange Management Shell (EMS) and assign ?Mailbox Import Export? Role to the Admin. You may also assign this to a user or group
New-Managementroleassignment ?Role ?Mailbox Import Export? ?User ?Administrator?- Define UNC path to a network share or create a shared folder with read/write access, where you want to store the exported PST files
- Restart Exchange Management Shell after the permissions are granted
As the complete manual export process involves a series of steps, it is recommended to create a backup and carry out the process in a test environment before touching the live environment. For this, you will have to,
- Create a test environment with the Exchange, CAS, Active Directory and other roles installed on the server
- Create test users and their mailboxes
- Perform a series of steps to export mailboxes to PST
Export All Exchange Mailboxes to PST
In Exchange Management Shell, type
$Export = Get-Mailbox
This displays all the mailboxes in your organization. Then type,
$Export|%{$_|New-MailboxExportRequest -FilePath "file://FileServerName/pst/$($_.alias).pst"}Export All Exchange Mailboxes to PST using Foreach Loop
$Export = Get-MailboxThis displays all the mailboxes in the organization.
foreach ($Mailbox in (Get-Mailbox)) { New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox $Mailbox -FilePath "\\\\$($Mailbox.Alias).PST" }The command works same as above. Only difference is use of foreach loop.
Export All Exchange Mailboxes to PST with Specified Date
$Export = Get-MailboxLists all the mailboxes in your organization.
$Export|%{$_|New-MailboxExportRequest -ContentFilter {(Received -lt "01/01-2020")} -FilePath file://FileServerName/pst/$($_.alias).pst}Exports all the Exchange mailboxes to PST that contains mail items received before January 1, 2020.
Export All Exchange Mailboxes to PST with Specific Folders
$Export = Get-MailboxLists all the mailboxes in your organization.
$Export|%{$_|New-MailboxExportRequest -IncludeFolders "#Inbox#,"#SentItems#" -FilePath file://FileServerName/pst/$($_.alias).pst}Exports all Exchange mailboxes to corresponding PST files containing specific folders. In this case, Sent Items and Inbox.
Selectively Export Multiple Exchange Mailboxes to PST
Alternately, you can perform mass-export using a pre-defined list using a CSV or text file. You can create a CSV file manually with a defined column ?Alias? to list the Mailbox Alias field for export.
This way, you can choose to edit the text to include or exclude certain mailboxes or export only selected mailboxes that are listed in the file.
$Export = Get-Content .\Mailboxes.csv$Export|%{$_|New-MailboxExportRequest -FilePath "\\FileServerName\pst\$($_.alias).pst"} In case of error or when export fails by using these EMS commands, skip to the next method.
Method 2: Using Stellar Converter for EDB
Stellar Converter for EDB software. It?s a powerful EDB to PST Converter that helps you export multiple Exchange mailboxes at once to corresponding PST files
The software exports all mailbox items including emails, attachments, contacts, calendars, notes, tasks, journals, & public folders to PST files.
Besides PST, admins can also extract single or multiple mailboxes to EML, MSG, RTF, PDF, & HTML formats or export offline EDB files directly to a Live Exchange server or Office 365 account.
It is compatible with MS Exchange versions 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, 2000 & 5.5.
How does this software work?
Following are the steps you can follow to bulk export Exchange mailboxes.
Homepage of the software provides two options to perform EDB file conversion ? Hosted Exchange & Offline EDB. Choose one as per
If you?ve selected Offline EDB, click ?Browse? to select the EDB file
Note: Alternately, click on Find button to search file in the parent folder. A pop-up appears to select multiple EDB files. This unique option lets you convert multiple EDB files. Scan and Convert these EDB files in one go.
- Select the File and click on Next button. A progress bar shows the scanning process
- The mailbox preview is displayed showing all mailboxes in EDB file
- Select the mailbox folder and click ?Save? from File menu. Select ?PST? if you want to export Exchange mailbox in PST format and then click Next. After that specify the location to save PST
- Your PST file(s) is saved at a defined location.
The Epilogue
It is interesting how a plenitude of enterprises have adopted the Exchange environment. But no environment is perfect enough to remain error-free and the same holds true with Exchange also. It becomes quintessential to manage the day-to-day business-operations from backend efficiently.
Exporting mailboxes to PST is often required for the backup purpose or when you need to import a user mailbox to another Outlook account. The task becomes tedious when it comes to bulk exporting multiple Exchange mailboxes to PST. To help you, we discussed two different methods that can help you efficiently export all user mailbox in Exchange 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 or 2019 to PST file format.
To be more efficient, you should follow the second method as it overcomes all the limitations, risks and errors that you may face with the first method. By using Stellar Converter for EDB, you can export multiple mailboxes from Exchange databases (whether offline or online) to PST file(s). You can also export offline EDB files to a live Exchange server or Office 365 account.
