Migrate from exchange to pop3...

[Dhony]

I'm not too hot on exchange so I'm hoping to get a response telling me this is really easy but we'll see.

I have a client who has 4 PC's and a single server they've had for about 3 years, (W2K Server with exchange). They're upgrading the PC's and the question came up about whether they should upgrade the server or do away with it completely and revert from a domain to a workgroup. They're not going to have more than 1 or two additional staff in the next few years, and they don't run any client server apps, so at the moment the server is just used fro file sharing and backups, and exchange. I've explained to them how they can share files in a workgroup, and how they can manage their backups, and how their pop3 mail will work directly to each PC.

My question is, how easy is it to migrate the existing mailboxes away from exchange and into outlook pst files. Do I just need to dissociate them from the user profiles in active directory? They're getting new PC's anyway so I assume I'll be able to import the pst file to the new client. As I said, I know little about exchange so I'm hoping it's that simple.

Cheers
Tony

 

[dkediger]

The EXMERGE utility, available for download from Microsoft, will easily export all the Exchange mailboxes into PST files. From there, of course, its an easy step to import them into indivdual mail profiles.

In order to remove their mail attributes from AD, I think you can select to Disable Mail per user just as you can select to Enable Mail. Then, to be sure, I would uninstall Exchange normally.

Is there still going to be a "central" workstation to host shares, or are the workstations going to share to each other? I'm sure you're aware, but in a workgroup environment, the latter gets geometrically complex with more users with around 10 being the practical limit. Since they're less than this, they should be OK, but just something to consider.

 

[Dhony]

Sounds good. They're going to ditch the server and replace it with a workgroup, but one of the PC's in the workgroup will host the data and be accessed by the others. Less complex and easier for backups etc. They're a small business, (financial services), and their not planning to recruit more than one or two people in the next 3 to 5 years. If they do grow much more than that they would have to implement a new server and domain but I;ve gone through that with them and they're happy.
I'll check out the exmerge utility and hopefully that will do the job. Thanks for the response

 

[Davetoo]

Is their email handled by an outside company? If the Exchange server has an MX record pointing to it, if they get rid of it they won't be able to send/receive any email.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.