What to do with outlook.pst files when moving to Exchange

Hi,
I am in the process of moving our small company to Exchange on SBS 2003 for
e-mail, currently hosted by our ISP. All users are on Outlook 2003 and have
a pst file currently.
I would like to simply cutover to Exchange on a particular day/weekend, and
have them point to the Exchange server at that time, and take their existing
pst file and leave it where it currently resides (on their desktop in the
default location) and add it to their outlook as a personal folder. This
would start Exchange "clean" and they could still access older e-mail as
needed.
Is this a good idea, bad idea? Pros or cons?

Thanks,

Mike

 

I would have them move the mail from the PST to the Mailbox and get rid of
the PST folders.

 

I personally like what you do since the current pst file will be used as
some kind of an archive of old messages. The only thing I would have
changed is the location of the pst. I would put it on the server so it can
be backed up along with the server backups (If you backup the individual
workstations then keeping it there it's ok)

Costas

 

I'd move in all contacts/calendars/tasks/notes, and a reasonable subset of
mail, and leave the PST files on the workstations if they are to be kept at
all. MS doesn't support accessing PST files across a LAN/WAN connection (I
don't recommend it as it will cause performance problems and can lead to
data corruption), and if you have that much free space on your server to
begin with, put the stuff in the mailboxes. If it's important enough to
keep, it's important enough to keep in the databases for
management/access/maintenance/administration.

See
http://www.exchangefaq.org/faq/Exchange-5.5/Why-PST-=-BAD-/q/Why-PST-=-BAD/qid/1209

 

Thanks for the feedback. The reason for my preference to have the pst stored
on the server is that I see it as an archive store that could potentially be
used by a user to access an old email message. I don't see it as something
that will be accessed on a daily basis. I agree that if the messages are
important enought to be kept they could be stored in the mailbox. Why do I
do it differently? I really don't know I try to keep the mailbox size
limit fixed to the levels we identified during implementation and when the
limit is approaching to be hit, I ask the users to move old messages to
their personal PSTs.

Maybe it's time for me to reevaluate my approach

Costas


"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"

 

Lanwench,
Thanks so much. Do you know to move calendar/contacts/notes, etc without
moving the entire pst file into the Exchange mailbox? Is it drag and drop?

Thanks,

Mike

 

It's drag and drop, when the window pops up for the location, just point it
to the Mailbox on the Exchange.

 

Maybe. Check out the PST=BAD link I posted for many reasons to avoid them.
The data in a PST file is entirely unmanagable.

 

What I do is:

Open the Exchange mailbox in Outlook (a new profile, ideally, with nothing
but Exchange in it)
Use File | Open | Outlook Data File to open the PST
Expand the PST file in your folder list
Select items within the folders (CTRL+A for all), then go to Edit | Copy To
Folder. Pick the appropriate folder.
For the calendar, this is easy if you set the view to By Category.
When done, right-click on the PST file in the folder list, and close it.

Never ever import in Outlook.

I don't like drag/drop, unless you're right-clicking and dragging and
choosing Copy. Moving instead of copying means you can't easily backtrack if
you have problems ....