This is one of the questions which gets asked repeatedly these days in online forums and hence thought of writing about it. As more and more companies are moving from Exchange 2003 to 2010, you will be moving mailboxes using the 2010 EMC or Shell cmdlet New-MoveRequest. While you can successfully move a mailbox from 2003 to 2010 or within 2010 (any scenario involving 2010), problems starts when you try to move the mailbox again to a different database or server.
Let me explain this with the help of an example. I moved an account (Chakka Rajith) from one database in my 2010 server to another one successfully & when I tried to move the same mailbox to a different database, I didn’t get the “New Local Move Request” option in the EMC.
I then tried the New-MoveRequest cmdlet to accomplish the task, but was greeted with the error below, which was more explanatory.
The problem is that once a mailbox is moved to a 2010 mailbox server, the move request has to be cleared before the mailbox can be moved again. Removing the move request clears all move related properties from the mailbox. To do that, launch EMC, navigate to Recipient Configuration -> Move Requests node. Right click the mailbox in question & select “Clear Move Request”. You can select multiple mailboxes to clear the properties in a single task.
Click OK to confirm.
You can also run the command below to clear the move request.
Remove-MoveRequest –identity “username”
If there are more number of mailboxes, run Get-MoveRequest –MoveStatus Completed | Remove-MoveRequest
Once the above tasks have been executed, you will be able to move the mailbox again!
Thanks for the post…it helped me…
Glad it helped Najam.
Great ,this worked !!
Thanks Balal
Thanks a lot for the tip.
Save me a lot of time.
Thanks Thisismyname.
Thanks for that, had been annoying me greatly.
No problem.
If you want to avoid this complex steps, you should check: http://bit.ly/eskrY5
Active Directory operation failed on mb2.domain.com. This error is not retriable. Additional information: Insufficient access rights to perform the operation.
Active directory response: 00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150A45, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0
Hi Anand,
Where exactly is the problem? Are the mailboxes visible in System Manager?
Hi, I'm in to the process moving my exch 2003 to exch 2010. The problem is, I don't get to see the mailbox of 2003 (legacy mailbox), once I get to see the legacy mailbox only I'll be able to make the local move. Please help!
What do you do with mailbox's that have "some corruption" in them?
I have two (so far) they have messages like this:
12/3/2010 4:21:00 PM [lcua67] A corrupted item was encountered during the move operation. The item wasn't copied to the destination mailbox.
Hi Rajith,
when I try to move a legacy mailbox from Exchange 2003 server on my new 2010 (same forest) through EMC, I receive an error. Exchange cannot found the db of Exchange 2003.
Any idea?
Thank you.
Flaviano
Have you ADMT'd the test.user5 from the 2003 forest to 2010 forest?
Thanks for getting back to me. That's part of the problem. Because of the new forest, its not working. Right now, I'm just testing with some test user mailboxes. But moving test.user5@contoso.com mailbox to the exchange 2010 server's test.user5@newcontoso.local has been problematic.
What have I done so far: I have not touched our existing exchange and AD infrastructure. I simply stood up a new DC Windows Server 2008 R2 for the new domain newcontoso.local and then stood up another 2008 Server and installed Exchange 2010 on it as our exchange server. Both are virtual machines but that shouldn't make any difference. I started off by creating a few users on the new exchange server to play around with, created mailboxes for them that are functioning, and now I'm testing the move of mailbox across forests. And running into erros, which have made me doubt my new server mailbox move deployment strategy.
Hi Ababwa,
Moving mailboxes cross forest is a totally different situation. I take that you have ADMT'd the users to the new AD? Does all the users have email address stamped as "@newcontoso.local"?
The command is correct. Will be helpful if you explain what all you have done so far.
Thanks,
Hi Deepak,
My company has tasked me with moving mailboxes from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. You say it's simple, but it has been anything but for me. I've read the technet library over and over, but I'm running into errors. I'm trying to move mailboxes from an Exchange 2003 server to an exchange 2010 server that's on a DIFFERENT FOREST than the Exchange 2003 one. Our current exchange 2003 forest does not contain a 2010 server at all. Any help maybe creating a quick and dirty guide with actual examples?
I've gotten as far as this command in the EMC shell on 2010:
New-MoveRequest -Identity 'test.user@contoso.com' -remoteLegacy -TargetDatabase 'Mailbox Database#######' -RemoteGlobalCatalog 'corp-exch.contoso.com' -RemoteCredential $Cred -TargetDeliveryDomain 'newcontoso.local'
Please any help would be great. Thanks!
Thanks for the comment Shai.
Thanks.
Thanks for the comment Anonymous.
For Failed MoveRequests, you can usually just remedy the situation (if it is because of a Quota error, increase the database's or user's Quota) and the run Resume-MoveRequest.
Yes, all MoveRequests have to be Removed before a new one can start. The MailboxReplicationService will not do this for you, it requires administrator action. It would be undesirable for requests to just disappear; this gives you an idea of how many your moves have completed by just running one simple command (Get-MoveRequest -MoveStatus Completed).
Glad that it helped you Anonymous.
Great Article, saved me a lot of heartache!
It's saturday!
Thanks for the fast response.
Thanks Deepak.
Once you move all mailboxes as part of a transition from 2003/2007 to 2010, you can clear all requests by running Get-MoveRequest –MoveStatus Completed | Remove-MoveRequest
I am not sure whether failed move requests have to be cleared. I will update when I come across one of those. I will check whether restarting the Mailbox Replication Service clears all requests automatically as well.
Great, well explained. Thanks for sharing, Ok so we have to remember to clear the move-request once it is completed. Would be better if system checked for completed status and removed old request and created new one with a warning messages and confirmation prompt.
What happens when there is an error in move mailbox(for corrupted messsages and other reason) and we have to run it again. Do we have to remove move request and redo it? or we could just resume the move request or retry? Not sure if you come across this.
thanks