Public Folder Migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010

Since Data is too much crucial for an organization & sometimes it becomes the need of an organization to migrate data to another Exchange. Also due to some security reasons it becomes the necessity to migrate data to the newer version. Although there are so many third party tools that can do this task in a simply & efficient way but we will have a look at another methods to perform this work.


So, in this segment we’ll be discussing all the possible methods to migrate public folder & what will be its consequences.
Basically, Migrating Public Folder can be done in a simple way. There are 2 methods for doing so:
1.    Migration using Exchange 2003 Manager console.
2.    Migration using Exchange 2010 Management Shell.

Migration using Exchange 2003 Manager console

In this very method Public folder from the Exchange 2003 is being moved to Exchange 2010 using the inbuilt utility Manager console 2003.
Important instruction before migration: There must be enough disk space in the destination folder where you’re migrating your public folder. This is so because migration process generates too much log files which needs storage capacity.

Steps for Migration using 2003 Manager Console

Step 1: First open the Exchange Manager on Exchange server 2003. Then go to the replicas of the public folder on the server, & browse public Folder Instances from Public folder store as shown in the figure below.

 

Step 2: After that right click on Public folder store & you will get an option ‘Move All Replicas’, Click on that.

 

Step 3: Then you have to select the server to which you want to move all the public folder replicas. Select the one to move.

Step 4: As you click on OK, you’ll get a warning window which shows that ‘Move process may take several hours’. Click on OK to verify that (as shown below).

This Process will take time but as the operation finishes all the public folder items migrated to exchange 2010 & the empty list will be shown by Public Folder Instances.

 Migration using Exchange 2010 Management Shell

This is another method to migrate Public Folder of Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. In this all the data of public folder will move to mailbox server of Exchange 2010. This is the simplest process for the migration of Public Folder.

This can be done by using the Script: “MoveAllReplicas.ps1”. This will move all your Public Folder data from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange 2010.
Now what you have to do is first open the Exchange Management Shell & go to the Script folder as shown in command below:

Note: But there is some permission which you need to assign to the Mailbox before this procedure.
Then in order to move the public you have to perform the procedure i.e., use MoveAllReplicas.ps1 script as shown by the example below:

Here, Server01 is the Exchange Server 2003 & Server02 is the Exchange Server 2010. This Commands let you to replace an old server with a new server & move public folder from Exchange 2003 to the Exchange 2010.

Conclusion: In this segment we have learnt about how to migrate public folder from one Exchange server to another. For the technical user the above mentioned procedure might not be tuff to concern but for the novice user, migration task is very typical, if they skip any step while performing the migration process then might not get the positive result. In that situation I have alternative solution which named as Exchange Recovery tool which helps to migrate mailbox or public folder data into new Exchange server as well as repair damaged or offline EDB file and extract its data into PST format.