Use Exchange Administrator's export and import features to move data in a flash

[Editor's Note: Some material in this column was adapted from Chapter 5 of Managing Microsoft Exchange Server, ISBN 1565925459. The information appears here courtesy of the publisher, O'Reilly & Associates.]

Tucked away under the Microsoft Exchange Administrator Tools menu lies a secret that most Microsoft Exchange Server administrators don't know about: powerful export and import features. When you learn how to properly use these features, you can export the entire Global Address List (GAL), change thousands of SMTP addresses at one time, and import large numbers of custom recipients—all without breaking a sweat. To perform such feats, you need to master only three steps: exporting, modifying, and importing data. But first, you need to know about the data format that Exchange Administrator uses during the export and import processes.

File Format
To export and import data, Exchange Administrator uses Comma Separated Values (CSV) files. Each line in a .csv file specifies data for an exported object and contains one or more property fields. Commas, without surrounding spaces, separate adjacent fields. Each field can be empty, can contain one value, or can contain multiple values (although the Exchange directory permits most fields only to be empty or to contain one value).

Exchange Server .csv files contain a header, which tells Exchange Administrator—and you—the meaning of each field. For example, the header line

Obj-Class,First Name,Last Name,Display Name,Alias Name,Directory Name,
Primary Windows NT Account,Home-Server,E-mail address,E-mail Addresses,
Members,Obj-Container,Hide from AB

specifies that each line of the file's contents will have 13 property fields, starting with Obj-Class, ending with Hide from AB, and including the mailbox alias (i.e., Alias Name), the mailbox's home server (i.e., Home-Server), and mailbox-attached email addresses (i.e., E-mail Addresses). You must place the entire header on the first line of the .csv file.

The content lines of an Exchange Server .csv file contain the entry values that correspond to the header fields. For example, in combination with the example header, the content line

Mailbox,Paul,Robichaux,Paul Robichaux,PaulR,PaulR,RA\Paul,
HSV1,,
MS:RA/HSV/robichaux%SMTP:paul@
robichaux.net%X400:c=US;a= ;p=
Robichaux ?
Asso;o=US;s=Robichaux;g=Paul;,,/ou=US/cn=Recipients,

specifies that the first entry is for a mailbox assigned to Paul Robichaux. This content line displays two important characteristics. First and most important, when a field (e.g., E-mail Addresses) contains multiple values, the percent sign character (%) separates those values. (If a property value contains a comma, double quotes must surround the value.) Second, fields (e.g., Members) without corresponding values are completely empty, with no spaces, tabs, or other characters between the separating commas. To make .csv files perform correctly, you must properly format the header line and each content line.

Exporting Data
To modify data for many objects simultaneously, you can export a .csv file, tweak it, then import it back into the directory. (For an example of this process, see the sidebar, "A Perfect Example," page 148.) When you export a .csv file, Exchange Administrator generates a header, including default fields such as the mailbox name and alias. Alternatively, you can specify a header that includes the fields you want to export. (You can use the header.exe tool from the Microsoft BackOffice Resource Kit—BORK—to easily generate a header containing specific fields.) When you want to modify a specific set of attributes, create the header file first. Then, follow these steps:

  1. From the Exchange Administrator Tools menu, click Directory Export to open the Directory Export dialog box, which Figure 1 shows.
  2. From the MS Exchange server drop-down list, select the server you want to contact to retrieve the data. This machine doesn't need to be the server you're logged on to. Be aware that choosing a remote server will increase network traffic between the machine on which you're running Exchange Administrator and the selected server.
  3. From the Home server drop-down list, select the server that contains the data you want to export. By default, this is the server you're logged on to.
  4. Click Export File and select a file in which to store the exported data. You can type a filename to create a new file, in which case Exchange Administrator exports the default header values, or you can select an existing file, in which case Exchange Administrator appends the export records to that file.
  5. Click Container, and select the container or Address Book View (ABV) that you want to export. By default, Exchange Administrator exports the contents of the Recipients container. When you want to include the contents of the selected container's subcontainers, select the Include subcontainers check box.
  6. In the Export objects section, select check boxes for the objects you want in the output file. You can export mailboxes, custom recipients, and distribution lists (DLs) in any combination.
  7. Click Export.
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