What's the best way to move a large number of messages?

Question asked by andrew knasinski - 1/6/2015 at 9:08 AM

Answered

I have some users with 20k+ emails in their inbox. I'd like to move them (ex: all 2014) to a new server folder. Is it best to do this via their IMAP client, thru the web interface, or direct on server?

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Employee Replied

1/7/2015 at 8:57 AM

Employee Post Marked As Answer

Hi Andrew,

The quickest way for a server admin to move a lot of messages to another SmarterMail server would be:

1. Create a new folder in the web interface on the destination account.
2. Copy all the grp files in the source account's folder to that new folder using Windows Explorer.
3. Then delete mailbox.cfg in the destination account.
4. Login to the destination server's Web interface as the system administrator, go to "Manage -> Restore" and rebuild that account's destination folder.

If a domain admin or end user need to copy the files, they would want to using an email client and add both accounts via IMAP and then drag and drop the messages from one account to the other.

I hope this helps!

andrew knasinski Replied

1/8/2015 at 6:46 AM

Where do I find the Restore option? I don't see that in admin. Server v13.1

Employee Replied

1/8/2015 at 8:05 AM

Employee Post

As Andrea stated, it's found under the Manage section. It should be the last (bottom-most) option. You may also want to read this about the Restore functionality: http://help.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/v13/Default.aspx?p=_SA&v=13.1.5485&lang=en-US&page=systemadmin/frmrestoreuser

Employee Replied

1/8/2015 at 8:26 AM

Employee Post

This article gives some more steps on using that feature as well, and it has been updated to include information on moving large numbers of emails: http://portal.smartertools.com/kb/a2980/restore-a-users-account-folders-or-emails.aspx

Paul Blank Replied

1/10/2015 at 8:21 AM

I have often cleaned up user mailboxes by creating new mailboxes named for past years and moving mail from the Inbox into those. What I have done (there are many ways - this is one I've used), using the webmail interface, is to mark 2-4 months of messages at a time (I try to keep those moves under about 6,000 to 7,000 messages per move operation), and move them (using Actions/Move) into the new mailbox. It takes a few minutes, but is a pretty clean way to do this. I leave time for the actions to complete, and then leave additional time after completion for the disk/memory caches to stabilize. One glitch is that sometimes the messages are copied, instead of moved, but the easy fix is to then delete the messages in the original folder. The biggest advantage of this is that it's all done within the webmail GUI.

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