Exchange 2010 – Exporting Mailboxes without EXMERGE

I often see customers struggle to make use of the export mailbox features in Exchange Server 2010.  I suspect this is because it is an area that has changed in the last few years and there is a lot of conflicting information online that doesn't clearly state which version of Exchange the information is for.  I thought I would write this to explain how to export mailbox data in Exchange Server 2010 RTM and the changes that were made in SP1.

Exchange Server 2010 RTM

With Exchange 2010 we introduced RBAC to control access rights, this required a change in role assignments before we could use the cmdlet, it also brought a change to 64-bit only code which meant that we need a 64-bit installation of Outlook before we can successfully export a mailbox…

Requirements

  • Permissions assigned to user via RBAC
  • Exchange 2010 Management Tools Installed
  • 64-bit version of Outlook 2010 installed
  • .Net Framework 3.5
  • PowerShell 2.0
To assign RBAC permissions to a user…
    1: New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –User “<username>”

To Assign RBAC permissions to a group
    1: New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –Group “<usergroup>”

After assigning permissions it may be necessary to logoff and back on or to close and re-open your PowerShell window.

    1: Export-Mailbox -Identity john@contoso.com -PSTFolderPath C:\PSTFiles\john.pst

Exchange Server 2010 SP1

With the release of Exchange Server 2010 SP1 the export-mailbox cmdlet was replaced with new-mailboxexportrequest, it has similar requirements to export-mailbox, however it does not require Outlook to be installed.

Requirements

  • Permissions assigned to user via RBAC
  • Exchange 2010 Management Tools Installed
  • .Net Framwork 3.5
  • PowerShell 3.5
  • Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1
To assign RBAC permissions to a user…

    1: New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –User “<username>”

To Assign RBAC permissions to a group
    1: New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –Group “<usergroup>”

After assigning permissions it may be necessary to logoff and back on or to close and re-open your PowerShell window.

    1: New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox AylaKol -FilePath "\\SERVER01\PSTFileShare\Ayla_Recovered.pst"