Summary: In this article, we will be talking about the issue that could arise when having an Active Directory Forest with child domains. There is no issue with this, except that you might encounter an error while exporting a mailbox to a PST file using the Exchange Admin Center (EAC). The error encountered can be as below.
In Exchange Server, from time to time or for maintenance work and one would need to export a mailbox from the Exchange Server into a PST file for archiving, having a leaver procedure which would be in line with the company?s policy, or you would just want an export just in case you would need the data after a clean-up. From Exchange Server 2013 onwards, it was introduced in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) that the administrator with the correct rights can export to a PST file.
If you would have the correct rights, you can export the selected mailbox/s to a PST file for safe keeping. This can be done as follows.
- Enter the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) and log in with the appropriate user.
- After login, click on Recipients
- Click on Mailboxes
- Here you will have the whole list of mailboxes in your Exchange Server/s
- Click on the More options and click on Export to a PST file
On the first page, you will need to select the user to export by clicking on the Browse button. Once the mailbox has been selected and what to export, you click on the Next button.
The next step is to enter the UNC path for the destination which must not be a direct drive, but a network path.
The next step is optional, if you would like to receive an email notification when the export has been completed.
The Operation couldn't be performed because object 'username' couldn't be found on domain.corp
Although the error pops out in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), you could encounter the same issue when using the New-MailboxExportRequest PowerShell cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell (EMS).
The problem here is that if the Active Directory session which is responsible for searching the directory is only scoped to the local domain that you are running the command from, or where the Exchange Server is installed. Since the user is in the child domain and it doesn?t exactly belong to the domain you are running the request from, the object will return an error saying that it wasn?t found.
The first solution is to not use the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) and use the PowerShell method using the New-MailboxExportRequest PowerShell cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell (EMS).
The reason being with the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), you cannot specify a custom domain controller to do the lookup from. The alternative and workaround to the issue, is to use PowerShell. This can be done by adding the -DomainController switch which enables you to explicitly provide the name of the domain controller of the active directory where the user resides.
An example of this is as below,
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox "User" -FilePath \\server\PSTExport\export.pst -DomainController <DomainController>This way, the export process will talk to the specified domain controller to get the user information and export the mailbox as the command specified.
This is the first workaround that one should try as of course, there could be other issues that might be setting off this warning. It could be that there is an issue of communication between the two active directory servers which could be hindering the lookup. There could be other configuration issues that would affect the communication between the Active Directory servers, like an issue on the network where certain ports would be blocked, Antivirus or antimalware applications could be blocking the communications or a fault on one or both Active Directory servers where the schema or something else in the core could be broken.
This error doesn?t affect only user mailboxes, but also shared mailboxes, and archives. In this case where one cannot export the mailbox, there isn?t much information or help from the native tools as the database cannot be accessed and cannot be exported with other tools, except for professional tools like Stellar Converter for EDB.
Conclusion
With Stellar Converter for EDB, you can open any Exchange Server database, being mounted or not as well without having an Exchange Server installed. This means that the application is independent. Once the EDB file is opened, and after a quick scan, you will have the whole structure of the EDB file with the mailboxes, archives, shared mailboxes, public folders and even disconnected mailboxes. You can browse through them with an Outlook-like interface which is easy to use, and it features in-line search and a full HTML viewer of email, contacts, calendar, journal, and tasks.
With Stellar Converter for EDB you can export directly to a live Exchange Server of any version being Exchange 2007 till the latest instalment being Exchange Server 2019. You can also use the application to export directly to an Office 365 tenant with multiple features like parallel exports, VIP priority exports, automatic or manual mailbox matching and continuation if the export would be interrupted.
