Quick Hit: Export-Mailbox Cmdlet in Exchange 2007

Ever needed to export the contents of an entire mailbox (or mailboxes)?  The Export-Mailbox cmdlet that is available via the Exchange 2007 PowerShell console can export each mailbox to a PST file.  In addition, Import-Mailbox can be used to import the contents of a PST back into an existing Exchange 2007 mailbox.

Syntax:

Export-Mailbox –Identity <mailbox alias> –PSTFolderPath <path to PST file>

There are a number of additional parameters available to filter the contents and tweet the configuration of what exactly is exported.  Using Export-Mailbox can be very time-consuming. a 200 MB mailbox can take 20 minutes or more (or did so in my tests).

A few things to remember when using Export-Mailbox:

1. The account running the cmdlet must have full permissions to the mailbox in order for the export to complete successfully.

   

2. The export will export all mail contents including the contents of the dumpster for that mailbox.
3. Export-Mailbox requires that Outlook 2003 SP2 or later is installed on the machine from which the command is executed. 
4. Export-Mailbox can only be run using the 32-bit version of the management tools.  This means that you have will have to load the 32-bit management tools on a workstation, since production environments of Exchange 2007 run in 64-bit environments.

This is a perfect alternative to what required ExMerge in the past.