How to Export Exchange Mailbox to PST File with PowerShell

If you are an Exchange administrator, you may need to export mailboxes to PST files for various reasons, such as backup, migration, compliance, or archiving. For example, an employee leaves the organization and you want to archive the mailbox to a PST file. By default, no user can import and export PST files in Exchange Server. Before you can do this, you need role permissions. In this blog post, you will learn how to export Exchange mailbox to PST file format with PowerShell.

Edit Mailbox Import Export role permissions

The Import Export role for Mailbox allows administrators to import and export mailbox content and clean unwanted content from a mailbox. Therefore, we need access to the Import Export role. Without access, we cannot export PST files from Exchange Server.

Get Mailbox Import Export Role

Let’s use the Get-ManagementRoleAssignment cmdlet to view who is assigned the Mailbox Import Export role.

C:\>Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -role "Mailbox Import Export" -GetEffectiveUsers | ft -AutoSize

If you want to filter the result, we can filter by account name.

C:\>Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -role "Mailbox Import Export" -GetEffectiveUsers | Where { $_.EffectiveUserName -like "User_Name_Enter" } | ft -AutoSize

Add to role assignment specific user.

C:\>New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role "Mailbox Import Export" -User "Jane" | ft -AutoSize

The user was successfully assigned to the Mailbox Import Export role. Verify the permission.

Remove Mailbox Import Export Role

For security reasons, it’s a good idea to remove the permissions after you’re done exporting the mailbox to PST.

C:\>Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role "Mailbox Import Export" | Where { $_.EffectiveUserName -like "Jane" } | Remove-managementRoleAssignment

Create a Sharing Folder for the PST File Export

When exporting mailbox data as a PST file, it needs to be saved in a share folder. We will create a folder with the correct permissions. I have created a folder with the name PST on the D drive of the computer.

Right click on the PST folder we created, click properties and then click Sharing > Advanced Sharing.

After checking “Share this folder”, click on the “Permissions” button.

After clicking the Add button, we write the “Exchange Trusted Subsystem” and “SYSTEM” groups in the “Enter the object names to select” section.

We give “Change” and “Read” permissions for “Exchange Trusted Subsystem” group and “Full Control” permission for “SYSTEM” group and click OK button.

Export Exchange mailbox to PST File with PowerShell

We use the Get-Mailbox command to display the display names of users.

C:\>New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox "caner" -FilePath "\\Exc01\pst\caner.pst"

Check the Status of Export Mailbox to PST

Export Mailbox status is displayed.

C:\>Get-MailboxExportRequest | Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics

Mailbox Export status displays the size moved in the migration time.

C:\>Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics caner | ft SourceAlias,OverallDuration,EstimatedTransferSize,BytesTransferred

Image of the PST file in the \Exc01\pst\ directory.

Export All Exchange mailbox to PST

Bulk export Exchange mailboxes to PST file commads.

C:\>$alluser = Get-Mailbox
C:\>foreach($Mailbox in $alluser){New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox $Mailbox.Alias -FilePath "\\Exc01\pst\$($mailbox.alias).pst"}

Clear the completed export request.

C:\>Get-MailboxExportRequest -Status Completed | Remove-MailboxExportRequest

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have shown you how to export Exchange mailbox to PST file format. We hope this post was useful and informative for you.

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