Steps to Export Exchange 2010 Mailboxes to PST

Himanshu Goyal | Updated On - August 29, 2022 |

Read time 11 minutes

The Exchange Administrator must export the Exchange mailboxes to some offline PST file to follow some compliance standards of their business. Another reason can be to take backup of their account to keep them protected. For a novice user of Exchange Server 2010, it requires lots of preparation and prerequisites to complete the export process.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 offers two methods to export mailbox data to PST. The first one is including Exchange Management Shell commands and another one is through Exchange Admin Center. The Exchange mailbox should be healthy, active, and accessible for users. Although, the export process will not make an effect on the existing mailbox you can still work on it while exporting to PST.

We’ll move to the tool part later; first, let’s see how PowerShell cmdlets work.

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Using PowerShell cmdlets to Export Exchange 2010 to PST

If you’re a technical person well-versed with the Exchange commands, then using PowerShell is the best way to export Exchange 2010 mailboxes to PST. This process consists of four major steps. Here we have mentioned all the steps in details.

1. Grant ‘Mailbox Import Export’ Permissions to the User – As a user, you’ll have to get full rights to Exchange account to perform this procedure. By default, these rights are not assigned to any account, so you’ll have to provide them. Use the below command to get necessary permissions and roles.
   New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –User Administrator

   In this command, the syntax ‘User’ is the username.

2. Create a Shared N/W to Store the Exported PST Files – There is often multiple client access servers in a network, and the export-mailbox request can be processed by any of them. So, you need to ensure that the path to store the PST file is valid. The best way to do this is to create a new Network Shared folder and grant Exchange Trusted Subsystem group read/write permissions to this folder.
3. Export Mailbox to PST – Once everything is configured, you can export Exchange 2010 mailboxes to PST using PowerShell cmdlets. However, using the PowerShell cmdlets depends on what type of mailboxes you want to export from Exchange 2010. For every mailbox type, there is a different cmdlet. We have mentioned all of them here.
   • For Primary Mailbox – You can use the below cmdlet to export primary mailboxes to PST.
     New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox <username> -FilePath <pstFilePath>

     The <pstFilePath> syntax refers to the location where the PST file will be stored. This command will not create a directory automatically, so you need to ensure that path you’re using exists.

   • For Personal Archive Mailboxes – Use the below cmdlet to export archive mailboxes to PST
     New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox <username> -IsArchive -FilePath <pstFilePath>

     However, you’ll need to recover archive mailbox in Exchange 2010 before exporting if they are deleted permanently.

   • For Specific Data from User Mailbox
     New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox <username> -ContentFilter {<filter>} -FilePath <pstFilePath>

     In this cmdlet, the {<filter>} syntax can be any value that is required.

   • For Specific Mailbox Folder – A mailbox folder in Exchange includes many folders like Inbox, sent items, calendar, contacts, deleted items, journals, tasks, etc. The specific folder is denoted with opening and closing # markers. For example, if you want to export sent items, then it will be denoted as #sentitems# in the below command.
     New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox <username> -IncludeFolders “#Sentitems#” -FilePath <pstFilePath>

     Here we exported only the Sent items folder to the PST file.

     When the export request is running, and you want to make some amendments in it, then you can modify the running commands in a limited way. But, remember that you cannot modify the basic information of the export command like the source mailbox, destination PST file, destination folder for the PST. Here is an example of request modification –

     Set-MailboxExportRequest -Identity ‘ValeriaBarnes\mailbox’ -BadItemLimit 15

     The command will set the bad item limit to the 15 for the selected mailbox.

     When you need to pause the request, you can use another cmdlet to halt it.

     Get-MailboxExportRequest -Status InProgress | Suspend-MailboxExportRequest -SuspendComment “Please resume the migration after Friday at 10 P.M.”

     It is a fine example of suspending an in-progress migration process, and the comment asks to resume the migration after a definite time.

     To resume the export process after some time.

     Get-MailboxExportRequest -Status Suspended | Resume-MailboxExportRequest

     The command will resume any suspended process.

     Here are the points you need to remember while running the export command in the Exchange Management Shell –

     1. You can apply the filters on the emails present in the mailboxes. The available criteria are sender, recipients, attachments, folder, message content, message size, importance, etc.
     2. You can include or exclude specific folders by their name.
     3. You can mention the destination folder for the PST file.
     4. When you have created multiple requests, you can put a priority value for them to specify the order.
4. Cleaning Up – Once the export to PST is complete, you need to clean up the export process to make sure everything is working fine, and there is no data loss.You can check the status of all active export jobs with the following command:
   Get-MailboxExportRequest | Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics

   Now, remove all the assigned permissions to clean up the Exchange 2010 export process with the following command:

   Remove-ManagementRoleAssignment “Mailbox Import Export-<username>”

   Similarly, you can remove the mailbox export request from the Exchange Server.

These four steps will be included in the export process of Exchange 2010 mailboxes to PST. But, this process is very complicated and challenging for beginners as well as inexperienced administrators. So, a better alternative to this process is using an EDB to PST converterthat allows quick conversion of Exchange mailboxes to PST file.

Another excellent way to export Exchange mailboxes to PST is to use the GUI interface of Exchange Admin Center. Although it doesn’t provide as many options as Exchange PowerShell, it makes it pretty easy to export the mailbox data.

To export Exchange mailboxes to PST with Exchange Admin Center, follow the below steps:

1. Go to Exchange Admin Center and login as an administrator
2. Now, go to Recipients>>Mailboxes
3. Here click the three dots (More options), and select Export to a PST file from the drop-down menu.
   
4. In the opened wizard, select the mailbox that you want to export to PST and click ‘Next.’
   
   Note: While exporting mailbox data to PST, make sure you select the appropriate option to ensure what mailbox content you want to export.
5. Provide a location on the server where you want to save the exported file, enter the name for the PST file, and then click ‘Next.’
   
6. Now, click Browse to select the user account to which you want to send notifications.
   
7. After making a selection, click Finish to start the PST export on Exchange 2010 mailbox server. Once the process is complete, you will receive an email from Exchange.

Let’s tell you that this progress of the Export cannot be checked or verified unless it is complete.

It is a great utility that allows users to convert Exchange 2010 mailboxes to PST easily. It is embedded with some unique features like bulk conversion of EDB file, specific mailboxes migration, exporting EDB file to Office 365 or Live Exchange, etc. Also, the user interface of this software is very simple, which makes it easy to convert EDB file to PST even for non-technical users.

Let’s go through the working process of this tool to understand it better.

1. Download and install the tool on your system.
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2. Launch the tool and select Offline EDB as source type and click Next.
   
3. Select the specific EDB file that you want to export to PST and click Next.
   
4. Select a scanning method to repair the EDB file; click Next.
   
5. The EDB file can now be seen on the tool. Right-click on the root directory of the EDB file and click Export Mailboxes to PST.
   
6. Select the mailboxes you want to extract to PST and select a location to save the extracted file, and then click Export.
   
   Note: You can also use filters to convert specific mailboxes to PST based on date, time, item type, etc.
7. Once the process is done, a notification will display on the screen confirming the same. Click OK.
   
8. A new wizard will display on the screen with the summary. Click OK to finish the process.
   

This is the most useful and efficient method to export Exchange 2010 mailboxes to PST.

Wrap Up

 
When the Exchange Server 2010 database becomes corrupt, then you cannot export them to a PST file, and it can become corrupt to endanger whole professional data. It is necessary to use the efficient method to export Exchange data to PST using Kernel for Exchange Server software. It can recover entire mailboxes from a corrupt EDB file and save them to a new or existing PST file.

Video Tutorial to Export Exchange 2010 Mailboxes to PST