Exchange Server Mailbox Sync Issues

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Erasmus354

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 12, 2004
Messages
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Not sure if this is the right forum. I am temping at a friends business. They have a SBS2003 exchange server. One of the employees has not been receiving email to their outlook recently. I got that fixed, kind of, they now are receiving new emails to their outlook. Now here is the problem, I can't get any old emails to come through to their outlook. All I can see are 27 junk mails and 3 test emails I just sent.

I have access to the Exchange Server, I have found the mailbox, I can see that it has ~2,500 items in it. I am computer literate but don't know much about Exchange servers. Is there a way for me to access the entire mailbox, kind of kick the local outlook into downloading everything again?
 
Log into the users mailbox using OWA.....view mails. Are they all there? If so, you don't have to fiddle with Exchange or anything on the server at all.

I'll bet anything the end user tripped a filter in her Outlook..so they're only viewing new e-mails. In Outlook...View, Current View...did they trip the "last 7 days" option?
 
I think it might be something more serious. I think most of the 2500 items are contacts (do they count as items). When I click on properties for the Inbox it says there are only 4 inbox items on the server.
 
Well....hmmm..
Dunno the history here...so taking blind stabs.

Did their Outlook ever work?
Is this a new computer for them?
Or is this a new Outlook profile?
Is new mail being delivered to their mailbox...or to their Outlook Personal Folders? Or perhaps was it in the past being delivered to personal folders (PST)s instead of the mailbox?

What exactly changed in between the points of "It was working" and "It's broken"

OWA....that's the first thing I turn to when testing to look in a users mailbox..it's the absolute fastest way to isolate some wonky Outlook rules...which end users often bork up. It takes you about 7 seconds to take a look at their OWA.
 
Ok I think I may have found out what happened.

The person in question went away on vacation and they tried to setup an extra PC to receive his email so the people still here could access it. All of his email is on that machine now and it no longer appears to be on the server. The outlook on that machine has all of the emails up until yesterday and the server now has all of the emails from today onward.

What is the best way for me to go about getting these emails back on the server?

EDIT: Trying to clarify a bit more. All of his past emails seem to be in a personal folder (outlook1.pst file) on this machine. Can I somehow use this .pst file and put everything back into the exchange server from that?
 
It sounds like they setup POP on the other box so it downloaded and erased all the e-mail off the server. If it is saved to a PST, then you can just copy them back into the Mailbox.

Copy the outlook1.pst over to the computer that is setup correctly (MAPI), and copy and paste and you should be good.
 
Go to that machine. Open up Outlook....it is probably already seeing his PST. Make sure it's also setup to his mailbox on the exchange server in the mail setup. Now...you can drag 'n drop the mail, or....do the import function...import from file....personal folder....and deliver to mailbox on exchange server. Once done and cofirmed, remove that outlook profile..or at least the PST in that profile so that doesn't happen again.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Can I somehow use this .pst file and put everything back into the exchange server from that?
Click to expand...


open outlook on the computer that is connected to exchange the correct way and use the import/export tool to import the PST file into their mailbox. bam. messages back on teh server again.
 
Captain Colonoscopy said:
open outlook on the computer that is connected to exchange the correct way and use the import/export tool to import the PST file into their mailbox. bam. messages back on teh server again.
Click to expand...

Yep, this appears to be working. It is importing the inbox now and when I go to the exchange server I can see the items for his account increasing as the import works.

Thanks to everyone for your help!

So that I can tell them what happened, it is most likely that the outlook they setup on the machine was simply configured wrong (POP) and it downloaded and deleted the mails from the server? It's odd because that outlook doesn't appear to have any email accounts configured. Meh, the important thing is the emails are not lost and are being put back where they belong.
 
Erasmus354 said:
So that I can tell them what happened, it is most likely that the outlook they setup on the machine was simply configured wrong (POP) and it downloaded and deleted the mails from the server? It's odd because that outlook doesn't appear to have any email accounts configured. Meh, the important thing is the emails are not lost and are being put back where they belong.
Click to expand...

Without watching over the shoulder of whoever dorked with that machine....you're only wasting time guessing.

Could have been POP3, but I doubt some amateur would know how to set that up on SBS.

More than likely someone fumbled through setting up Outlook...and mistakingly set it to deliver to the personal folder instead of the mailbox.
 
I bet this is what happened, no pop3.

The user went to a machine that already had an Outlook profile setup on it (mite have had no mail or anything). The user sets up Exchange, Outlook 03 defaulted to save the mail to the Personal Folder. All mail got download to local machine.

It happens not a big deal.

Just export to a PST, save it to the server, Load up the users Exchange mailbox and import it.

And tell users that when they are away to use OWA or RWW =)
 
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