Migrating from Exchange 2003 Contacts Problems

Question asked by Brian Ebers - 2/3/2015 at 8:03 AM

Unanswered

I am in the process of migrating clients from Exchange 2003 to my Smartermail 12.x box. Client made decision to cut over clean fortunately. Using Outlook 2010 we are exporting everything off the old system to local archive PST and starting fresh with IMAP account connection to Smartermail. I am using "Add to Outlook" for Contacts and Calendar sync. Users connect to smartermail with phones & tablets using ActiveSync.

I am having a problem migrating Contacts using Outlook 2010. I put the old contacts in List view and select all. Then right-click "Move | Copy to Other Folder" and copy contacts to the smartermail SharePoint List Contacts folder, I get a warning that incompatible items will be put in deleted items folder, then all contacts seem to move over just fine. However on the next send/receive upwards of 80% of the contacts disappear from the SharePoint List Contacts folder.

Any suggestions? Do I need to do a manual CSV export or something then import into Smartermail web interface? No option to use mailbox migration feature for contacts as the original server is Ex 2003.

Thanks in advance for any and all ideas/responses.

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Employee Replied

2/3/2015 at 1:54 PM

Employee Post

Hello Brian,

Thanks for the information. I would advise to see if you can export the contacts in a .CSV format to bring in the information to SmarterMail. Please follow the steps outlined in the Knowledge Base Article.

http://portal.smartertools.com/kb/a2710/import-contacts-to-smartermail.aspx

Thank You.

Brian Ebers Replied

2/4/2015 at 7:54 AM

Thanks Joe. The CSV import worked so now Outlook 2010 and Web mail contacs lists sync. The test user had approx. 2500 contacts and sharepoint lists sync seems to handling it.

However, I now have a different problem with the same user. No matter what I do, his iphone with SM activesync account will only display about 1300 contacts out of the 2500. I have deleted and re-added the account on iPhone after power cycle, etc etc. Mess with iPhone dispay settings. The missing contacts are random throughout the list, can't identify a pattern yet.

Are there some limitation settings on ActiveSync or perhaps could I be hitting an artificial IIS config problem? I am windows server 2012 sm 12.4.5364. iPhone 6 is on iOS 8.1.3 syncing on Wifi to Comcast high speed so no cell data issues there.

Should I start a new thread?

Thanks.

Merle Wait Replied

2/17/2015 at 12:28 AM

Whatever became of this? I have a user that is wanting to migrate to ActiveSync/Smarter Mail, but we have been reluctant because of the number of contacts in his current exchange (close to 3700). Is this still an issue? (that part about the random missing contacts, that is)

Brian Ebers Replied

2/19/2015 at 8:06 AM

I have two things to report. If we shut off ActiveSync contacts in iOS and configured a CardDAV account, all the contacts displayed quickly and flawlessly.

In the mean time I opened an email ticket and followed the process through with support. They identified the problem and tested a solution in their lab. Their proposed solution was:

1) Sort the CSV file and look for blank critical fields such as email address, first, last etc (ST support was somewhat vague about what fields are critical) The list in question actually produced about 5 "bad" contacts.

2) Add the critical information or delete those contacts in the CSV.

3) From webmail interface, empty out contacts and reimport the cleaned up CSV.

I have not had a chance to disturb the user again to test the proposed solution as the CardDAV option seems to be working fine. The user was quite aggravated for nearly a week so I am giving some buffer time before testing again. Why ActiveSync served from Exchange 2003 worked fine with the bad contacts will likely remain a mystery.

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