Read time 10 minutes
Microsoft Exchange Server is essential for organizations to manage daily emails and other collaborative activities. All the Exchange mailboxes and items such as emails, contacts, calendars, and notes are stored in EDB file format. This explains the role EDB files play in the functioning of the Exchange server. When accessing the content stored within EDB files, you might need first to extract PST from EDB. However, the availability of so many methods and professional solutions might lead to confusion among users. In the further sections of this article, we’ll learn about the reasons and how to extract mailbox from EDB file.
Reason to extract mailbox from EDB
While for the Exchange Administrators it is very common to extract Exchange mailboxes from EDB, it can be quite unusual for the non-technical users dealing with the EDB files. If you don’t know whether you should extract mailbox from EDB, here are some convincing reasons that you must be aware of:
- To access mailbox contents from orphaned or dismounted database files.
- To access shared, archive, or public folders separately from the primary mailbox.
- To transfer individual mailboxes to a new database or Exchange Server.
- Accessing EDB files even without connecting to the Exchange Server.
- To access data when the Exchange database cannot be mounted.
- The log files on the system get deleted.
The above scenarios clearly state that extracting Exchange databases from EDB files is crucial.
Start by creating a new database
The Exchange Administrator can help you create a new database in the Exchange Admin Center with some simple steps as explained below:
Step 1. Go to the Servers>Databases in the Exchange Admin Center.
Step 2. In the databases category, click on the + button to create a new database.
Step 3. In new the database creation wizard, provide a name to the database.
Step 4. Choose the corresponding Exchange server version.
Step 5. Browse the location on your system to save the database file. You can change the default location.
Step 6. Click the Save button which will prompt a warning to restart the Exchange Serve before accessing the new EDB file.
Step 7. After restarting the server, you can see a new database in the databases category in the list of the databases in Exchange Admin Center.
However, the Exchange database often gets corrupt due to various reasons like virus infections, hard drive failures, Exchange dirty shutdown errors, or system failures. Database corruption can damage your Exchange database and make mailboxes inaccessible. Therefore, repair the EDB file immediately or extract mailbox from EDB file to PST. You can use the command ‘Run ESEUTIL’ for EDB Repair.
In this post, we will talk about the manual as well as automated approaches to extract Exchange mailbox from EDB. But, before that, let’s understand why you need to extract Exchange mailboxes from EDB files.
Methods to extract Exchange mailboxes from EDB file
There are 3 manual methods to extract Exchange mailboxes from EDB files, and let’s dive deep into all of them:
1. Using the Exchange admin center
Use the Exchange Admin Center to extract EDB files to PST; however, it supports only recent Exchange versions like Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019. Follow the given steps to extract mailbox from EDB file using the Exchange admin center.
Step 1. Go to Exchange Online and open Exchange Admin Center. Now, select recipients and go to mailboxes. A list of mailboxes will appear on your screen.
Step 2. Right-click on the mailbox you want to extract to PST, then choose the Export to a PST file option.
Step 3. The Export to PST dialogue box will appear on the screen. Now, browse and select the desired mailbox with the required option and click Next.
Step 4. Select a location where you want to save the Exchange mailbox data and click Next to continue.
Step 5. In the next step, check the checkbox for email notification, provide the name of the mailbox to receive mailbox notification, and click Finish.
This completes the extraction of mailboxes to the desired location. Once the export process is complete, you’ll receive a confirmation message in the specified PST mailbox.
Drawbacks of using the Exchange admin center to extract EDB files to PST:
- It requires administrative privileges to execute.
- It cannot recover corrupt mailbox data.
- Requires a properly functioning Exchange Server.
2. Using Exchange Management Shell
Exchange Management Shell is another free method to extract Exchange mailboxes from EDB files in Exchange Server 2007 and later versions. EMS uses PowerShell cmdlets to convert EDB files to PST.
Here, we will discuss how to extract PST from EDB files in Exchange Server 2016.
Step 1. Go to Exchange Management Shell and use the PowerShell cmdlet “New-MailboxExportRequest.” Use the below syntax for PowerShell cmdlets.
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox“<Mailbox name>” -FilePath” “<destination file path>”
Step 2. Here, enter the mailbox name you want to extract and the specific location where you want to extract the EDB file. For example:
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox abcd@www.kernel21.com -FilePath \\NDRWEB76-PC2\PST Data\Himanshu_PST.pst
Limitations of using Exchange Management Shell to extract EDB files to PST:
- It is necessary to have in-depth knowledge of EMS cmdlets.
- Cannot recover mailboxes from corrupt EDB file.
- The mailbox must be mounted on the Exchange Server.
3. ExMerge utility by Microsoft
ExMerge, the Microsoft Exchange Server Mailbox Merge Wizard, extracts the mailbox data from one Exchange Server’s mailbox and merges it into another mailbox running on a different Exchange Server. It copies the data from the mailbox as a separate PST file and then merges it into another mailbox.
Use ExMerge function on both single and multiple mailboxes, and it is smart enough to filter the mailbox content by various criteria. The tool will check the folders for duplicate items and skip them.
Download the free tool from the following URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2743
The tool’s wizard-like interface shows multiple options on a single screen. Here is the process to extract mailbox from EDB file:
Step 1. The first screen shows two options, choose the first option, Extract data from an Exchange Server Mailbox.
Step 2. Provide the Exchange Server name and click the Next button.
Step 3. The Data Selection Criteria page offers useful filters for the whole data. The filter tabs are Data, Import Procedure, Folders, Dates, and Message Details. In each tab, there are multiple options to filter the data. Click Apply and start the process.
Limitations of using the ExMerge tool to extract PST from EDB Exchange mailbox data:
- The tool fails to migrate PST files with more than 2 GB in size.
- It skips the corrupt email message present in the file.
- Unicode PST files are not recoverable using the ExMerge tool.
- Older versions of ExMerge do not support non-email like calendar, contacts, notes, tasks, journal, etc.
Conclusion
Being prepared for the database disaster saves you from losing significant data. This article provided different methods for extracting EDB files to save from data loss in the Exchange Server database. Manual methods have their limitations and require in-depth technical knowledge and experience. For such circumstances, trusting on a professional EDB to PST Converter like Kernel for EDB to PST is a wise choice to migrate EDB mailboxes to Office 365.
