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We are going to shift our office from one location to another and also we are going to install new machines at new office.

We have been using Outlook and Exchange for our business communication from past 11 months. As we are shifting to a new location, we want to access existing mailbox data at new location as well. So we have decided to convert existing OST files to PST files which we can import into Outlook on new systems. We have searched a lot over Internet and couldn’t find the best and easiest way to convert OST files to PST files.

Please suggest some good converters or any manual method to convert ost to pst files.

Any help will be appreciated.

@Microsoft

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Is this all going to be on the same Domain ???

Are you going to setup a new Exchange server ???

You should setup a Connection from one office to another and both Exchange servers should be in the Org Config. With that setup both servers should able to talk to each other.

Then you can just move mailboxes from one server to another with a New Remote Move Request that you can setup in EMC and transfer the mailboxes of the people that are about to move.

Also if you have setup Outlook Anywhere on the Client’s then by just pointing them to your OWA will allow people to use their mailboxes as normal.

If I understand you correctly

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try one of these. it is an old list i have. some of them may not working now.

http://www.convert-ost-pst.com

http://www.convertosttopst.co.uk

http://soft.udm4.com/Email-Tools/OST_Viewer.html

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Yes, it is going to be on same domain with the same Exchange Server.

We don’t want to take help of the Powershell scripts or Exchange management shell scripts as they are very time taking.

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or in your case , why dont you archive all emails from outlook for each user ?

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ask every user to archive all emails until today to a network drive.and you can collect all PSTs from there.

also you dont need to export anything if you are using same exchange server. When you connect to new systems, outlook will create new ost from exchange server

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If you still have your old exchange server in action then you can just bulk export all user accounts to PST from exchange.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/13908.bulk-export-mailboxes-to-pst-in-exchange-2010.aspx

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In that case if you are using same Exchange server than if you will have connectivity to old office then Outlook should be able to talk to your Exchange without problems. If you will have only Internet connectivity then I would setup Outlook with Outlook Anywhere Options - this way it will talk to your Exchange via OWA One way or the other I don’t see the point of saving emails as PSTs

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@ mxtj : Unfortunately, archieve folder got deleted accidentally and we are not able to restore it.

Also, thanks for the list of tools but tell me which one of them is best and are they free?

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@ Henry : Are these tools which you have listed are free?

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Why don’t you click the links and find out?

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once you archived, there wont have any mails left in ost, it all moved to pst archive file. Any file in OST will be in server too. so i am not sure what are you trying to achieve ?

if you are using it for the same user, you can add a copy to outlook folder in pc?

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Here is another proficient application named Lepide exchange manager( Software not available ) which would be a nice approach in order to convert OST files into PST format. This application ensures about the data security during the completion of whole conversion process with original data values.

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That’s where I got lost as well. Just don’t see the point of that when moving offices - there are easier, painless ways of moving to new office without having to save emails to PSTs

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I’m not seeing any reason at all to do this. Exchange is available via Outlook from outside an organization’s LAN with a very minor tweak in the connection settings. If you were decommissioning Exchange, sure … but you said you’re keeping it.

What you’re describing simply doesn’t make sense.

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Exporting an entire organization’s email database is going to be time consuming, regardless of the mechanism.

Again: either you’ve left out a very large bit of relevant information, or your organization simply doesn’t understand how Exchange works.

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http://www.wikihow.com/Archive-in-Outlook-2010

pretty much the same with Outlook 2013. this will move all your mailbox to pst files. Meanwhile in exchange you can check space in mailboxes to narrow who doesn’t complete the procedure

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As matthew.grandi suggested above, perhaps you should click the links and find out for yourself.

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From what I’ve uncovered in the past I had come to the conclusion that extracting data from an .ost is essentially a ‘recovery’ operation. The format isn’t designed to be the only container things are stored in and as such there aren’t really existing tools to get it out. There are third party tools like you saw listed, but they’re all going to leave you subject to potentially bizarre behavior.

The reliable way to do it would be to just export the data from Outlook.

That said, I’ve read over the thread and can’t figure out what you’re actually doing. It sounds like you’re moving locations, but you’re moving everything. So I’d just load everything into the truck at point A and unload it at point B and call it a day.

There obviously has to be something else going on here, but I can’t decode it!

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That’s because there isn’t a “best and easiest” way to do this. In fact, with Exchange actually working, there is no need to do this.

The OST file is a local copy of the mailbox on the Exchange server. It’s encrypted and by design is stupidly difficult to access if you can’t login as the user.

A properly configured Exchange server will be accessible from the new location. Simply point the new copies of Outlook to the Exchange server and Outlook will resync the server mailbox to the local machine, creating an OST file in the process. #done

If you’re unable to access your Exchange server from outside of your current office LAN, you have Exchange configured improperly and should address that issue instead of messing around with PST files. It will take less time and result in a more reliable migration.

If you’re moving the entire office all at once, there is no reason to do any of this. Simply shutdown the server, move it to the new location, and turn it on again. You may need to adjust your MX records if the move results in a change of Internet Service Provider, because the IP address of your server will change - but that’s trivial and can actually be done days ahead of the move.

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