Importing a PST containing IMAP Folders

I've done lots of work with PST files in the past, but recently got caught by surprise when we imported PST files that had been used by IMAP accounts as part of a migration to Exchange Server 2010. When you import a PST from and IMAP account, there are special IMAP views applied to the folders that prevent cached mailboxes from working properly. Basically, the view prevents Outlook from properly determining the presence of new messages.

We identified this problem because users started to complain about copying items into subfolders and the items were not appearing in the new folders. When we viewed the mailbox in OWA, we could see the items. If you view the properties of the folder in Outlook, on the General tab, it shows that the folder contains IMAP items

The fix for this is to change the type of folder so that Outlook uses the correct view and synchronizes the folder properly. You need to edit the folder properties in the Exchange database by using ExFolders.

The high level process is:

1. Give yourself FullMailbox access to all mailboxes that need to be fixed.
• For a single mailbox use the Exchange Management Console.
• For all mailboxes use the Exchange Management Shell: Get-Mailbox -RecipientTypeDetails usermailbox | Add-MailboxPermission -user (YourAccount) -AccessRights FullAccess
2. Run ExFolders and connect to the database
3. Select the Mailboxes you want to update
• For a single mailbox, select only that mailbox
• For all mailboxes, select the Mailboxes node
4. From the Tools menu open the Custom Bulk Operation window.
5. Search for folders with the PR_CONTAINER_CLASS property (0x3613001E) with a value of IPF.Imap and replace this property with a value of IPF.Note.
• Overall Filter: (&(0x361001E=IPF.Imap))
• Operation: Other folder properties, Modify, Property: PR_CONTAINER_CLASS 0x3613001E, Value: IPF.Note

6.  Remove your FullMailbox permissions from the mailboxes.
• For a single mailbox use the Exchange Management Console.
• For all mailboxes use the Exchange Management Shell: Get-Mailbox -RecipientTypeDetails usermailbox | Remove-MailboxPermission -user (YourAccount) -AccessRights FullAccess

After the property is updated, the folders should begin working immediately. You can verify by copy some items around and verifying that they are visible in the new location.

In Outlook 2010 (perhaps other versions also) there is a synchronization tab in the Properties of a cached mailbox folder. The tab will not appear for the fixed folders, but synchronization will be successful. A brief test indicated that if the cached mailbox is recreated then the synchronization tab will be added. However, for most scenarios, I consider this only cosmetic and not worth the effort.

I'm not sure whether this will apply to all installations, but on the server I was working with, when I viewed the properties of the folders, the PR_CONTAINER_CLASS property actually had a value of 0x361001F instead of 0x361001E as most documentation indicates. The 0x361001F property is the same property but a unicode version. When you query and modify 0x361001E, you actually query and modify 0x361001F which is what you seen when browsing the database.

I figured out a lot of this based on the following web page. It has nice detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do this. However, there is a typo where he indicates that the value to search for 0x36100iE, when in fact it is 0x361001E.

• http://mellositmusings.com/2012/08/29/exchange-2010-mailboxes-inherit-imap-folder-views-and-attributes-if-imported-from-a-pst-dump-of-an-imap-account/

Download ExFolders from this link.  Note that it must be installed in the Exchange 2010 bin folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\v14\bin). There is also a .reg file that needs to be imported.

• http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Exchange-2010-SP1-ExFolders-e6bfd405