Mailbox Initialization 1

[kovacsa]

Hello .. Can anyone explain what it means to "initialize" a mailbox? I often read, initialize a mailbox by sending a message to it, but am not familiar with what actually happens during this process.

Thanks,

kovacsa

 

[zbnet]

When you 'create' a new mailbox, you are really creating a Directory object. To start off with, there is no store object that corresponds with the directory object. There are 3 ways you can synchronise the directory and the store so that there is both a dir and a store object for the mailbox:

1) send the mailbox a message;
2) log in to the mailbox using a mapi client (this 'fixes' the language of the mailbox based on the language of the client you use, this is responsible for the names of the special folders inbox, outbox, sent items etc etc);
3) run a DS/IS consistency check which compares the directory and the store, and creates the corresponding objects if they don't exist.

This is an issue when using something like ExMerge to move data from an old to a new mailbox on a different server - ExMerge is a store-based tool, and can't import a PST into a mailbox until the new mailbox has been 'initialised' - until then, the mailbox is simply missing from the list of mailboxes that ExMerge can see in the store.