1
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................3

Dependencies ..................................................................4

General Overview.............................................................4

Troubleshooting..............................................................10

Tools ..............................................................................17

Labs ...............................................................................19

Acknowledgments ..........................................................22 3Introduction
In Exchange Server 2003 the Move Mailbox Wizard has been updated to be multithreaded and have the
ability to recover if it encounters corrupt mailbox entries.
By default it will attempt to move the whole mailbox in one attempt. If it fails, it will attempt to move the
mailbox item by item. You can set a maximum number of corrupt items, but if it exceeds this number the
mailbox move will fail.
By default, Move Mailbox uses four threads, which means it will attempt to move four mailboxes at a time.
Limitations
As of the Exchange 2003 release, there is no ability to
move mailboxes between Administrative groups when
you are in mixed mode environments.
Being in Native Mode means that you have only
Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers only in your
org, and you have selected to switch your org to Native
mode in Exchange System Manager.
The limitation of not being to move mailboxes between
Administrative groups is because of the distinguished
names (also known as DNs) and other attributes placed
on the mailboxes and mailbox items within the mixed
mode admin groups. These attributes involve a large
cost of adding and changing when moving between
administrative groups within the mixed mode
environment.

Dependencies
Client
Windows 2003 Admin Tools
Exchange 2003 System Manager
Server
Exchange 2003 System Manager
General Overview
It is possible to move a mailbox between versions of Exchange that are visible through System Manager.
So it is possible to move mailboxes between Exchange 5.5 / Exchange 2000 / Exchange 2003.
Starting the Wizard
You can start the Move Mailbox Wizard in a number of ways:
 In Active Directory
Users and Computers,
navigate to a user and
then select one or more
user objects. Then,
right-click and select
Exchange Tasks.

 In Exchange System
Manager, navigate to a
server object, then expand
until you get to a mailbox
store. Expand Mailboxes
and then select one or more
user objects. Then, right-
click and select Exchange

This dialog box allows you to select how
Move Mailbox handles corrupted messages.
You can either just abort moving the mailbox,
or skip corrupted items and generate a
failure report.
You can select maximum number of
corrupted items to skip before you file the
move of the mailbox and generate a failure
report. Exchange provides the ability to
handle up to 100 bad messages. The UI will
restrict the number of bad messages skipped
to be 100. This way, no move will occur
when there are major store corruptions
issues with a mailbox store or with a
particular mailbox.
Click Next.

or 6You can schedule the start date and time of
when the move will start. You can also specify when to terminate the
move. If only eighty out of one hundred
mailboxes are finished moving by the ending

Once a thread is finished, Exchange starts
on the next mailbox.