How to move Public Folder data from Exchange Server to SharePoint manually

Despite advising customers to migrate public folder data to SharePoint, Microsoft hasn’t supplied any tools to automate the process. And although there are a number of third-party utilities on the market, tight budgets can make acquiring these utilities difficult. Fortunately, small- and medium-sized businesses can manually move public folder data to SharePoint without the help of third party.

Public folders contain different data types — messages, calendar items, contacts and tasks. How you migrate content depends on the type of data you’re moving. This tip gives the specific steps for migrating Exchange message data.

• Step 1. Creating a .pst file for public folder content
  You need to start by moving all your public folder content to one or more .pst files. If you’re using Outlook 2010, be aware that the option to create .pst files is hidden; go to the ribbon’s Home tab and click New Item. Choose the More Items option, then selectOutlook Data File.

  

  tep 2. Moving public folder content to the .pst file
  After you’ve created the .pst file, click on Outlook’s folder icon to display all available folders. Next, copy your public folder data to the .pst file. At this point, you’re not actually moving the public folder data to the .pst file. Public folders should remain intact until the entire process is complete. That way, if something goes wrong during the migration process, you won’t lose important data.

   

  To copy public folder data to the .pst file, go to your public folder and select all of its contents. Next, right-click on the data and choose the Move -> Copy to Folder option. When prompted, choose the .pst file that you created. Outlook will copy all of the data from the public folder into the .pst file so that both contain identical copies of your data.

  

  • Although you can copy multiple public folders to a single .pst file, creating a separate .pst file for each folder is easier to organize. Once you’ve made a copy of all public folder data, take the public folder database offline to prevent users from adding content to the folders.
  • Step 3. Migrating public folder content from the .pst file to SharePoint
    After creating a copy of your public folder data, you can migrate it from the .pst file to SharePoint. Begin by opening a browser window and navigating to your SharePoint document library.

    SharePoint document libraries are viewed within a Web browser, which means that the library’s location is displayed within the browser’s address bar as a URL. You must convert this URL into universal naming convention (UNC) format. For example, the URL for the document library on my lab server is http://sharepoint.lab.com/Shared%Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx

    After converting it to UNC format, the URL becomes \sharepoint.lab.comShared Documents. Then you can map a drive letter to it.

    

    • How to map drives to SharePoint
      If you have trouble mapping a drive to your SharePoint document library, there are a couple of things you can do:
      • Use your SharePoint server’s fully qualified domain name (FQDN) in the drive mapping. When I used the computer name (SharePoint, instead ofSharePoint.lab.com), I mapped a drive, but the drive appeared empty.
      • I used Windows Vista for this process because I couldn’t get it to work with Windows 7, as shown in Figure 3. This is because a default SharePoint 2010 deployment isn’t running WebDAV.
    • Step 4. Completing the public folder migration
      The final step is to drag data from the .pst file into the mapped network drive. Don’t forget to take into account any applicable subfolders within the network drive. As you can see in Figure 4, the .pst file remains intact after the migration.

      

      This brings up an interesting point. Why did we even create a .pst file? Doing so gives your public folder data an extra level of protection. I also chose to use a .pst file because the migration to SharePoint can take some time. Creating a .pst file allows you to keep the public folder database offline during the SharePoint migration, which prevents users from modifying the data.

       

      The .pst data should appear within the SharePoint document library (Figure 5). You must refresh your Web browser to display items.