Moving Public Folders from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010

Migrating from Exchange 2003 can be a worrisome process.
Exchange is probably the most mission critical server in your organisation you want to ensure that no data is lost.
Public folders are often overlooked and it's only when you get towards decommissioning the server that you start to think about how to get the data off it.

The concept is easy, Exchange 2003 will only allow you to delete a PF store, if all PFs are replicated on other servers.

Microsoft have provided a few scripts to help you set up the PF replication they are located on the Ex2010 server in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Scripts:

AddReplicaToPFRecursive.ps1 – adds a server to the replica list for a public folder and subfolders.

For example, to add EX2010 as a replica for all public folders on server EX2003 starting at the root folder of \ you would run this command.

AddReplicaToPFRecursive.ps1 –Server EX2003
 –TopPublicFolder \ –ServerToAdd EX2010

MoveAllReplicas.ps1 – this script replaces all of the replicas on one server with the new server. It works over the whole Public Folder store so there is no need to specify the root folder.

To move all replicas from EX2003 to EX2010 you would run this command.

MoveAllReplicas.ps1 –Server EX2003 –NewServer EX2010

To check that the replicas have been set on the folders, you can run:

Get-publicfolder -recurse |fl identity,replicas

Once the replicas are all up to date, you should be able to remove the Ex 2003 public folder store.

I hope this tip proves useful for you, please remember to click on the ads to show your thanks.