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How to Export Exchange Contacts to PST Using PowerShell Commands?
Written By
Megha Sharma
Updated On
March 12, 2025
Read time 4 minutes
Exchange Server contacts are crucial for an organization as it stores crucial information about an organization. It is important to protect Exchange Server contacts because it carries user addresses. These user addresses help you to exchange messages via emails.
Do you know that it is necessary to backup these Exchange contacts? If you miss out on backup contacts, the changes in contacts on Exchange Server are not saved. Several times, Exchange Server may face downtime, corruption, and permanent data loss. So, it is the best approach to import Exchange Contacts to PST for extra protection.
Also, don’t forget to analyze all the key aspects for the export of contacts and where to begin. Let’s discuss how you can easily import Exchange contacts to Outlook PST.
The importance of Exchange Server contacts is endless. Still, it may vary for different business types. The Exchange administrators want to export Exchange Server mailbox contacts in these scenarios.
The above reasons guide Exchange administrators to have a backup of Exchange contacts. The best way to do this is by exporting them into portable and accessible Outlook PST files.
To export Exchange contacts to PST, you can use Exchange PowerShell or the Exchange Management Shell cmdlet – “New-MailboxExportRequest”. This method applies to Exchange Server 2010 and the above versions.
Let us start with the pre-requirements to export Exchange contacts to PST files.
The user performing the contacts export should have the Exchange administrative rights. Then, assign Mailbox Import Export role to the Exchange user who wants to import Exchange contacts to PST file, must use this Exchange Management Shell command:
In the above command, provide the respective Exchange mailbox user name in place of <username>.
Note:
Once you have configured all the priorities set up for the export, now begin the process. Follow these steps to export Exchange Server mailbox contacts to PST on the shared folder path.
Provide the PST file path and the mailbox user name in the above command as per the requirements.
Perform export contacts from Exchange shared mailboxes & user mailboxes to CSV file format, i.e., using the Microsoft Outlook Import/Export feature.
Note: Exchange administrators may face an un-identification error after running the above command. For this, learn to fix the “New-MailboxExportRequest couldn’t find the enterprise organization container” error.
When the export shows Queued, which means the export is in progress, and will take time to complete. Once completed, you can find the exported contacts at the specified location.
The native method of running an Exchange PowerShell command to export mailbox contacts to Outlook PST file for backup and other uses requires hands-on experience on Exchange Management Shell. Running these commands without any prior knowledge could result in complex errors and sometimes data loss or database corruption. One more drawback of the native export solution is slow performance. It can take some time to export contacts from the Exchange Server organization to the Outlook PST file format.
We understand the issues faced by Exchange Server administrators while exporting Exchange contacts So, try a professional tool to recover the Exchange Server database and export its mailbox to PST.
Exchange users can rely on the advanced Kernel for Exchange Server tool for easy exports. This Exchange server data recovery tool fixes all Exchange server database issues in no time. After the resolution, you can easily export Exchange contacts to PST with complete integrity.
The above article provides helpful measures to import Exchange contacts to PST using PowerShell commands and an automated tool. New-MailboxExportRequest command in the Exchange PowerShell offers export of Exchange user mailbox or items like Contacts, Calendars, etc. However, its limitations like slow export, errors, or manual mistakes, force users to look for a professional tool like Kernel for Exchange Server.
