How to migrate Exchange Server public folders to Exchange Server 2013

Description

This article describes how to migrate Exchange Server public folders to Exchange Server 2013.
 

Limitations

There are Exchange Server limitations to what can be migrated from pre-Exchange Server 2013 release versions to Exchange 2013. See the Exchange 2013 Server release notes for details.

There is an Enterprise Vault limitation that when migrating auto-enabled folders as they must remain in the same relative location to the auto-enabler. If this is not done, when the public folders are auto-enabled after migration, the data will be placed into new archives. Maintaining the relative location will allow the existing archives to be used.

Exchange Server 2013 public folder deployment recommendations

In Exchange Server 2013, public folders are held in mailbox databases rather than in special public folder databases. Microsoft has not given advice on how to set up public folders but they do say that public folder mailboxes are subject to the same mailbox quotas as other mailboxes. It is therefore probable that large public folder structures need several public folder mailboxes.

It is recommended that the Exchange Server 2013 public folders mailboxes are deployed such that there are several Exchange Server 2013 public folder mailboxes under which the public folders can reside. The different public folder tasks should be targeting different mailboxes, probably up to a maximum of three tasks or 15 threads.

Moving pre-Exchange 2013 public folder archiving tasks

After the public folders have been migrated to Exchange Server 2013 the old Exchange Server 2010/2007 public folder targets must be deleted and added back again as Exchange Server 2013 public folder targets.

To delete Exchange Server 2010/2007 public folder targets: 

1. Start the Enterprise Vault Administration Console. 
2. Delete all Standard Public Folder targets. 
3. If there are auto-enabled Public Folder targets, do the following: 
4. Delete the public folder archiving task.

If using a version of Enterprise Vault that is earlier than 10.0.4 it is required to remove the Enterprise Vault information from the Exchange 2010/2007 public folder targets.

To remove Enterprise Vault information from the Exchange 2010/2007 public folder targets: 

1. Install OutlookSpy, which is available from www.dimastr.com/outspy/home.htm.
2. Download the attachment EV_public_folder_migration_cleanup.txt file
3. Open EV_public_folder_migration_cleanup.txt with Notepad and copy all the contents to the clipboard. 
4. Start Outlook and open the top level auto-enabled Public Folder. 
5. Click the OutlookSpy tab and in the tool bar click Folder. 
6. Click the MAPIFolder dialog, click the Script tab. 
7. Paste the script text into the Script tab and then click Run. 

Creating the new public folder task

To create a new public folder task: 

1. Start the Enterprise Vault Administration Console. 
2. Create a new Public Folder task with Exchange 2013 mailbox server as the target. 
3. In the Administration Console, add the migrated public folders to the new Public Folder task.