Exmerge Decoded

Today, I wrote my 1st email announcing the promotion of my team member .. It was a good feeling .. I feel it was yesterday when I started working here .. Time is flying .. It has been nearly 2 years when I was sitting in the office at my home town and I took an interview of a guy who looked smart but was nearly shivering .. The same guy came along with me to a place .. where we had to battle it out all over again .. Battling the new office / new city ( Town - Village .. Whatever you call it ) / new team / new food / new apartment / new aunty .. But life has started to settle down ( work not personal ) .. So my happiness has doubled .. seeing some one grow from day 1 ..

Like sparrows sitting on a tree .. When there was a "BANG" .. Lot of them flew in different directions .. Some flew even before the D day .. Now that most of them have settled .. It takes away any bitter feeling that was left inside .. Having said that .. There are couple of sparrows which hurt a lot when they flew away .. Not because I couldn't fly without them .. but 'cos they took the U turn too late

How can I forget the crow's .. Wohi to ... the one's who turned white and the colours changed like a chameleon .. They remind me of the trust vote of Dr. Manmohan Singh .. I still pray .. God give some wisdom to the souls that are roaming around on this planet .. doing things that shouldn't be done ..

Back to work :
Exmerge is an utility which i believe is not used to its potential .. However, it is very easy to use and to understand ..

This tool was developed by : Kali Buhariwalla ( Naam se to Hindustani Lagta hai )

You can get EXMERGE from http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q174197&

Lets go step by step :
Start Exmerge

1. On the “Procedure Selection” dialogue box, select “Export or Import (One Step Procedure)” or “Export or Import (Two Step Procedure)”

• One step procedure is not used much in Exchange 2003 as you can move mailboxes between Administrative groups.
• Two step procedure is the most commonly used way for exporting / importing the mailbox / mails / permissions ..

2. On the “Two Step Procedure” dialogue box, select “Step 1: Extract data from and Exchange Server Mailbox” or “Step 2: Import data into an Exchange Server Mailbox”

• As we can see, the two options are either to import the PST that was extracted or copied from source to the destination mailbox or to export the contents in the form of mails or permissions

3. We are now presented with the “Source Server” dialogue box, specify the name of your Exchange server, and if applicable the name and LDAP port number of your Domain Controller, if you do not specify the Domain Controller Exmerge will use your Global Catalogue server to find the users, this will take longer, but if you have a multiple domain environment this should be used.

• You don't need to specify the FQDN anywhere on this tool .. Neither for the name of exchange server Nor for the domain controller.

4. The most important thing to know in exmerge is the "Options" button on the “Source Server” dialogue box

On the first tab “Data”, the options are :

• User Messages and Folders : This option is used to copy all the contents of the mailbox. Free / Busy information will not be copied as it resides on the public folders.
• Associated Folder Messages : We should always select this option while exporting a mailbox. One of the reasons if that OOF message will not be exported if we don't select this message.
• Folder Permissions : As the name suggests all folder permissions will be exported ..
• Items from Dumpster : Dumpster is a feature that is disabled by default in outlook. Usually this is not used when we want to export mailbox.

On the second tab “Import Procedure”, the options are:

• Copy Data into the Target Store : This will copy the data to the destination mailbox and will not check for duplicate emails.
• Merge Data into the Target Store : This option will do the similar thing like the previous option. But is intelligent enough to eliminate any duplicates.
• Replace Existing Data in Target Store : This should be used when the destination mailbox is corrupted and we are restoring the mails from the PST backup.
• Archive Data to Target Store : This option is used to archive emails when the users are too lazy to do it on their own or if the IT has pampered them too much .. :)

On the third tab “Folders”, the options are:

• Ignore these folders : This will give you an option to ignore specified folders while importing or exporting. Hidden folders like sync folders are not available here. Also folders created by the user are also not available.
• Process only these folders : It is of similar use as the last option .. Use your brains to see what suits your requirement the best .. It depends on case to case as to which radio button to select.
• It also has a check box " Apply action to subfolders " .. Which is self explanatory

On the fourth tab “Dates”, the options are:

• All : This will select all messages.
• Dated From / To : this gives you an option to specify the dates between which the mailbox items have to be exported.
• We can also select the radio button to perform the actions based on the Delivery Time or the Last Modification Time

On the fifth tab “Message Details”, the options are:

• Enter new message subject : This will give us an option to add / delete a message with specific subject or messages which contain a specific word in the subject.
• Enter new attachment name : This also gives us an option to add / delete a message with specific attachment or messages which contain a specific word in the attachment name.

5. Once we have click on Next the “Database Selection” dialogue box is displayed, from here we can choose what Stores we would like to search through.

• This will show all mailbox stores and not public folder or recovery storage groups

6. On moving to the next screen, we are presented with the “Mailbox Selection” dialogue box,

• You can select individual mailboxes or you have the option to “Select All”

7. the next screen is the “Locale Selection” dialogue box

• If you are using say Chinese Locale on the exchange server then it has to changed accordingly.

8. Next is the “Target Directory” dialogue box

• You just have to browse to the folder path where you want to save the file.

9. The next screen is the “Save Settings” dialogue box,

• File Names : Here we can change the file names and location where exmerge saves its files. e.g Subjects.txt, Folders.txt, etc

10. On the next screen the actual process starts .. :)

If we abort the process .. it will only get killed till the current folder that the tool is working upon is not completed.