How to retain Folder Hierarchy while exporting emails from EmailXtender to a PST

Thanks for the Reply Rajan. Maintaining all those email-folder pointers, resources required for it and large size that databases may have because of all that makes perfect sense, why we don't have it.

So far end users goes, they would really like to have a PST with same folder structures and archived emails in it. With all emails in a flat folder structure 'Inbox' is just too much of work for them, you know, like sort those emails again etc.

Now,

If from EX Search --> I search emails for multiple mailboxes (with separate message by owner option still ON) and once search is ready ---> right click --> Restore Selected Message(s) to Folder ---> would that still restore those emails to Primary Inbox? And not the folders from where those were archived? I guess it's still the same above logic and restore option would restore it just to Primary Mailbox, but just double checking.

Other Long way would be - during search --> under Folders Tab ---> select one folder at a time ---> so when PST is ready, you know which folder that PST corresponds to. But it's just too much of work.

Also,

Is there a way to stop archiving new emails for the time being?

Thanks again!

Does the email you are looking to export only exist in EmailXtender or does it still exist in Exchange?

Emails are on Exchange and after X days those are moved to EX. I am not sure about interval and journal settings though.

Thanks!

They are Archived at some point either by Journaling or a scheduled recurring Historic Archive task, that creates a copy of the message in EmailXtender.

They are probably shortcutted at some point with either just the attachments or also the message bodies replaced with a stub.

Then they are probably deleted from Exchange at some scheduled point in time.

The reason I asked is that if you are at the point where are shortcutted and not deleted you could always restore the shortcuts to Exchange and then create the PST from Exchange. At this point the messages exist in both locations.

If you are at the point where they are deleted from Exchange then you would have to do the export from EmailXtender to PST and you would lose the folder structure.

Thanks Gary. Your explanation helps to know till what point emails will be at both the places. I think emails are deleted from Exchange at some point. If I take a look at volumes in EX, end date on some volume goes even beyond 2008. And if I check mailbox size on Exchange, it's pretty healthy. I mean if we compare time to email ratio, such a mailbox on Exchange would definitely grown up in size but seems like EX is deleting emails from Exchange DB. I will check more on what are current policies on EX. Is there a easy way to find when emails were deleted from Exchange Database, may be by taking a look at EX logs/volumes etc? I can see volumes under EX vault with older end dates, that have right-click options grayed out. While some volumes with recent end dates shows status as "open".

If I get to know, how to find when an email was deleted by EX for certain folders from Exchange Database, that will help me to take a call if I am going with restoring emails to mailbox option or with PST export

Thanks again and appreciate your help

Hi Vik,

I would like to highlight working of SourceOne and EmailXtender with exchange to see if that helps you with your queries:

1. For journaling mailboxes, both products pulls emails from journal mailboxes and then hard delete call is passed to exchange to delete processed messages.

2. Both products can archive emails from exchange using archive jobs/activities. Neither SourceOne nor EX deletes messages after archiving.

3. Customer can choose to shortcut emails to convert full emails to stubs using both products. This helps to bring user mailbox size down without deleting emails.

4. Admin can configure jobs on Ex/ES1 to delete emails in users mailboxes by configuring a criteria of older than certain amount of days. Unless these jobs are not configured to run SourceOne or EX do not delete emails from users mailboxes.

5. Exchange Admins may have some jobs configured on Exchange with help of certain tolls that could be deleting emails from user mailboxes (common practice).

If you think EX was deleting the emails you should launch EmailXtract For Exchange application and that should show you all the jobs configured. See if you have any jobs configured to delete emails. If not then EX didn’t delete it. It has data because that was archived by Journaling or EmailXtract Archive/Shortcut jobs. You can also check if EmailXtract jobs were configured with detail logging, that provided message level granularity of when jobs are run. These logs are saved in EmailXtract folder on EX server where EmailXtender is installed e.g. E:\EmailXtender\EmailXtract

EX and SourceOne are not replacement of the backup products but an archiving software for compliance purposes. It does have features that helps with maintaining database sizes on exchange/domino/sharepoint/file system and many use them as backup software but they need to remember EX and SourceOne does not maintain folder structure (unless it is SourceOne for Files/Sharepoint) and not for emails. Emails returned back will be emails in one folder of PST or one folder of mailbox.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Rajan

They can be restored by using the Search function and writing them back to a mailbox but the information about where they were originally stored is not maintained.

You would have to choose the mailbox folder to write them all to.

Thanks Rajan, really appreciate the work-flow that you explained above.

I was able to launch EmailXtract for Exchange --> clicked on Scheduled Tasks --> and it shows me list of the tasks. Most of these tasks are type 'shortcut' while there are few with type 'archive'. Now what I understand is anything that of type shortcut, I should be able to restore emails back to the original mailboxes in their respective folders.

I want to know about archive tasks though, when we archive messages, those will be archived in Xtender database. Is there a way to restore those emails back to the original mailboxes, into their respective folders?

If you could please help me out on the process to restore emails for shortcut tasks and archive tasks, that would be great.

Thanks again!

Oh yes! Search function, how could I miss that! Thanks Gary

and "writing them back to a mailbox but the information about where they were originally stored is not maintained" - is this true even for shortcuts? I guess is it true for sure for the messages handled by archive tasks?

I am sorry, but how would we know if shortcut still exists in Exchange......

The key is if the shortcut still exists in Exchange.

You can only restore to a shortcut that is still there.

Thanks Rajan, you are right, EX is a new responsibility to me and our previous EX guy is not around. We are moving mailboxes from Exchange 2007 to 2010 and also upgrading all our clients to Outlook 2010. And before I do that, I wanted to bring back EX emails either into the mailbox or into the PST. But we already spoke about limitations not having folder structure available in the PST export. And for getting emails back into Exchange mailbox, my question was how we know or verify if those shortcuts still exist in Exchange Databases. Solution that you've mentioned above is an Outlook side action item and not really feasible for the number of mailboxes that we have. I mean looks like I don't have an option to check if shortcut exists either from EX? or Exchange side.

Anyway, in addition to that we also have few EX archive rules under scheduled tasks (and I believe those are not doing any shortcutting). I guess our best bet is to check if we have an extended contract and talk to the support folks.

Though, Rajan, Gary - I really appreciate all your replies and thanks for the support.

Best Regards,

Vik

Greetings,

If I read all the conversation so far, to me look like EmailXtender might be the new responsibility that would have been assigned to you.

I would recommend that you open a support service request using support.emc.com website or by calling EMC dispatch team. This way EMC support personnel will be able to evaluate your scenario quickly and provide you with steps that may help. At least they should be able to present you with all the option you have in your hands. Please remember that if you have not started work on the SourceOne side, your site needs to be on the extended support contract for support to help you. For more information about SourceOne you may reach out to your account team or to an EMC partner (whatever is applicable in your scenario).

In regards to if you have shortcuts or not, in outlook add a column called messageClass (under all message fields). If message class is either IPM.Note.ExShortcut or IPM.note.ExShortcut.owa then emails in the user’s mailboxes are shortcuts. Do make sure that you do not have EMC SourceOne Offline Access or EMC EmailXtender User Cache products installed on the machine because they may be showing you full copy on the client machines even though on the exchange servers emails are shortcutted.

Best regards,

Rajan

Hi Vik,

EmailXtract application also allows shortcut jobs to run in simulation mode. You can configure a shortcut job with simulation mode checked against some mailboxes to restore shortcuts. In the logging tab you can select message detail level that way you will be able to see which emails will be restore back and what size would the mailbox be after restore.

Now there is another option:

You can work with EMC team or an EMC partner to introduce SourceOne in your environment. Same party can help you to convert your EX licenses to SourceOne licenses. SourceOne supports up till Exchange 2013 and new release will also be supporting Windows 8 along with many other qualifications and enhancements.

Once you have SourceOne in environment you do not need to restore emails to move mailboxes, actually it will help you. Imagine moving mailboxes with size of GB’s than MB’s because mailboxes are shortcutted. Once the move completes you can leave mailboxes shortcutted as it is.

You would also be able to roll out EMC Offline Access product to users machines to cache shortcutted email. This way when users are offline they will still be able to pull full emails from local cache (e.g. while travelling). Provided local cache has the items. Cache miss items will be pulled when they will be accessed provided internet access is available and servers could be reached.

Data that is archived in EmailXtender could also be migrated with help of product from EMC called In-Place Migration (IPM). Till this migration happens SourceOne will be working as a proxy for old data to pull it on request from EmailXtender servers. Migration will allow to decommission EX server(s) you may have and also if you have DiskXtender writing to EMC Centera that would not be needed any more.

Most companies needs to maintain data for n number of years due to compliance reasons you want to consider that as well.

I am not a sales person or consultant but a technical resource, there would be many other things that I would not have mentioned above.

I would suggest you to get in touch with your account rep and see what’s on offer and what could help you with plans of your organization.

Best regards,

Rajan