MS Exchange 2010 server acquaints a new set of PowerShell commands that are used in exporting Exchange 2010 mailboxes to PST and importing PST to server. Among several commands, one such cmdlet is Mailboxexportrequest, which is a command available for exporting mailboxes from on-premises of Exchange Server 2010. Its functioning is to export contents to primary mailboxes or save them in PST file format. However, this cmdlet is present in Mailbox Import Export role, which is by default not assigned to role group. Therefore, to avail the functioning of such cmdlet user will first have to add Mailbox Import Export to role group. In the following section, we will be discussing the need of EDB to PST conversion and ways to convert Exchange database to PST with new-mailboxexportrequest Exchange 2010.

Reasons to Convert EDB to PST

There are various reasons, due to which users need to convert the data from EDB to PST file format to break the server level dependency to access the EDB file individually; there is a need to convert the data to PST file format. Many times, the administrator may also need to perform the conversion of data for investigation purposes as Outlook offers a better search options to the users.

Ways to Convert Exchange 2010 Mailbox to PST

Users can convert their data from EDB to PST as mentioned with two ways:

Convert EDB Data to PST through New-mailboxexportrequest

• Step 1: Add the following command in Powershell to perform the conversion of EDB to PST

• Step 2: Make a separate folder to store the data, which is converted from EDB to PST.
• Step 3:Select the folder with a right-click >> go to properties >> share folder.
• Step 4:Allocate the permission of Read/Write and select share button.
• Step 5:Store the path name of shared folder in notepad.
• Step 6:Now run the following command on PowerShell. Once the process has completed, check the converted PST files

Note: In the above command, name of the mailbox, which is required to export, is MailboxName whereas EnterFilePath is the location of the folder, where PST file will be stored after conversion.

Limitation: The process is quite time-consuming due to the number of steps involved as well as it requires a live Exchange environment along with the database in a consistent form.

Convert EDB data to PST by using Third party utility

To overcome the limitation, there is a software namely EDB to PST Converter. It is designed in such a way that it converts EDB mailbox as well as public folder to Unicode type PST. It can convert unlimited data to PST file format along with which it maintains the data integrity after performing the conversion. By utilizing this utility, user can perform the conversion of mailboxes from inconsistent database as well.

Conclusion: In the above discussion, the need for converting EDB data is discussed. There are two possible solutions discussed to convert EDB data to PST file format i.e. new-mailboxexportrequest Exchange 2010 and EDB to PST converter. However, the second solution provides a trouble free option for such conversion.