Hi , we're deploying E2K7 to a customer who was using POP3 based clients as mail environments. Clients are a mixture of OE,thunderbird,Outlook etc . We're looking for a way to import such data into exchange via script and not having each user to drag and drop their emails into the exchange mailbox using IMAP profiles . Thanks

Based upon my experieincesif the clients have already downloaded the mail locally, then there really isn't a script out there that can go and randomly find a 1 of 3 different mail stores and import it to the server. Outlook has an import function, but I am not sure it covers the Thunderbird client. It would cover Outlook PSTs and Outlook Express imports though. However you would have to point it manually to each file location. However MSFT has released a new tool to assit with the migration from third party mail systems to Exchange. It's called the Microsoft Transporter Suite: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=35FC4205-792B-4306-8E4B-0DE9CCE72172&displaylang=en I do believe this tool only works from the POP3 server though. Meaning if all your users were to leave their email on the old server, you could bulk migrate it all to Exchange in one shot. That generally isn't the cae though with POP, but it is with IMAP. What I would probably do in your case is pick a date to "cut over" your users. The steps I would use to cut them over are as follows: I would create them all new mailboxes in Exchange, and inform them of their username and passwords ahead of time. You will need to make sure their existing email addresses were set up and working. Using internal DNS I would re-direct theiry clients using the same server name to the existing Exchange server. I would cut over the MX record to point to my new Exchange system and verify mail flow is working correctly. The backout plan is if it isn't working right is to flip everyone back to the original server. I would use the migration tool (which you would want to test ahead of time) to migrate all their existing/queued upmail to their new mailboxes on Exchange. I would then go person by person and switch them over to Outlook and import their various mail repositories into Exchange. Good luck

HotFix wrote: I do believe this tool only works from the POP3 server though. from the above mentioned article: "For generic POP/IMAP servers the suite contains a set of tools to bulk migrate mailboxes from any generic email servers that support the POP3 or IMAP4 protocol to mailboxes in Exchange Server 2007" I havent used this tool yet, but it seems it does support imap

Hotfix..do you know anyway to auto create imap accounts for all users so then can start using the new outlook 2007 and also use the old imap server ?thanks

You can bulk-createmailboxes from the Exchange Management Shell (Powershell). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310752.aspx And you can have an Exchange server defined in an Outlook profile in addition to an IMAP account. If I remember correctly all newly sent email will be sent through Exchange, so you could in theory keep your old IMAP server around just as a backup/old copy of mail. However depending on the size of your ogranization it may make more sense to use the Tansporter Suite I linked above because I believe it will create accounts for you as a part of the IMAP migraiton, in addition to moving the IMAP mail over (but don't quote me on that). So in theory either way would work depending on what you wanted to do with the old server/mail. Good luck!