Transfering Emails from Capita

[nimrodel]

Hi,

 

I'm thinking lots of people must have done this (or planned how to do it) but I can't find any reference on here or the rest of the web.....

 

My school is leaving EMpsn and moving to another provider. Currently we use EMBC's (or rather CAPITA's) email accessed via Outlook Web Access. Obviously, come Oct 31st all these emails will disappear or be inaccessible. All the teachers (and of course the office and head and me!) will need their email backing up and I thought this a simple (if laborious) process as follows:

 

• Configure Outlook 2010 for each person's email account, set as IMAP.
  
• All emails synch and appear in Outlook 2010
  
• Backup to offline file at the last minute
  
• Change mail server settings to that of the new provider
  
• Outlook 2010 synchs and all emails disappear.
  
• Re-instate backup
  
• sorted!
  

 

 

However, I tried this on a dummy email address and it doesn't work as I thought it would.

 

If I use EXPORT to create a backup, when I IMPORT, only the inbox gets comes in. Also, all "email received" dates are replaced with the current time and date thus losing the date stamp (although the date is correct when the email is opened).

 

Other methods have similar problems

 

Has anyone done this? If so, what did you do?

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Edu-IT]

Can you not backup to PST file them reimport again? It'll be time consuming, but, it should work?

[glennda]

Can you not backup to PST file them reimport again? It'll be time consuming, but, it should work?

 

yes and if crapita run Exchange 2010 they should easily able to bulk export the files to PST's for you with some simple powershell commands and provide you with the PST's.

[synaesthesia]

yes and if crapita run Exchange 2010 they should easily able to bulk export the files to PST's for you with some simple powershell commands and provide you with the PST's.

 

Good luck with that, they flatly refused for me. They're not particularly willing to help.

[glennda]

Good luck with that, they flatly refused for me. They're not particularly willing to help.

 

bless them - i'm sure if you transferred to another crapita service they will more then happily help!

[sukh]

It's your data they have, most providers that I have worked with are obliged to provide the data in a format that can be read and accessed by other systems.

 

I would escalate this and get them to provide your data.

[Edu-IT]

To be fair, I'd just do it yourself. Least you know it's done properly then. Don't think they're running 2010 either. Edited October 11, 2012 by Edu-IT

[TonySheppardNCC]

Email services are running on Exchange 2007. There is a price book as part of exit and you need to contact your LA for more support / advice.

[MatthewL]

If you can connect via Outlook as Exchange and the use the archive function and put it to a pst file.

[synaesthesia]

@nimrodel : right, just got back home so a little time to reply.

 

Process I went through for one of my schools was thus:

 

Set up EMBC email in Outlook and save the contents to PST. This was done via IMAP to reserve folder structures.

Set up new PST file for the new provider.

Set up new email system for the new provider.

Added the above PST to it and copied the inbox (and thus all the folders) across to the new PST

Removed old folder and EMBC account from Outlook (kept .PSTs for backups)

 

Bit slow on poor connections but reliable.

[Edu-IT]

I'd agree with that way of doing it, but obviously there's the difficulty of knowing when to do it because email will be constantly coming in to the mailboxes and you've got a deadline to do it by. How did you combat that @synaesthesia?

[sukh]

apart from any sync apps which service providers wont allow between different systems, you eiyhet set an alt recipient to deliver to both mail accounts or use a outlook clinet/server side rule for those accountz you arr working on.

[synaesthesia]

We didn't really need to with small amounts coming in, and for the one account that had lots we just had email downtime for a day. Mostly just outgoing email so not an issue with incoming mails being left in a void.

[nimrodel]

Thanks Synaesthesia,

 

I have to do this in 2 schools for a total of about 30 staff! Sounds like the way to go though. I have absolutely no confidence in Capita sending me the .PSTs and certainly they would charge for this. The only thing I can rely on them for is to send me three emails when one would do!

 

Those of you who suggested export/import.....it doesn't work properly. All the dates are changed to the time of import and some of the folders don't get imported.

 

Syn*, did you use one instance of Outlook and create multiple accounts or did you do this on lots of PCs? I was trying to avoid going to each teacher and using their laptops but I can see that 15 or so accounts on one outlook might be a problem?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

 

 

@nimrodel : right, just got back home so a little time to reply.

 

Process I went through for one of my schools was thus:

 

Set up EMBC email in Outlook and save the contents to PST. This was done via IMAP to reserve folder structures.

Set up new PST file for the new provider.

Set up new email system for the new provider.

Added the above PST to it and copied the inbox (and thus all the folders) across to the new PST

Removed old folder and EMBC account from Outlook (kept .PSTs for backups)

 

Bit slow on poor connections but reliable.

[synaesthesia]

I did it all on one PC - we had a list of staff usernames and passwords to hand so we could exactly mirror the new setup too. This however might not be workable for all if they're (understandably) not willing to give up passwords.

Downloaded all the original emails first from all the accounts then went back through as I set the new ones up one by one. Only 15 staff, still took a couple of hours.

 

And heh @ Capita's 3 emails for the price of 1 - that thoroughly annoys me! Then again, Capita thoroughly annoys me.

[nimrodel]

Hmm.....I'm clearly making some fundamental mistake here! Please bear with me as I try to explain my problem:

 

To test your method, I created an email account on EMBC and sent and received a few emails just to populate it a bit.

I then created a matching account on Outlook (2010). The emails synch'd and Outlook showed the emails as you would expect.

I found the .PST file and backed it up

I created an email account on my own personal web site.

I created a matching account for that on Outlook and of course it was empty.

I copied the .PST file from the original EMBC account and replaced the empty one with it.

Outlook synch'd again and immediately all the emails disappeared!

 

What am I missing??

 

Dave

 

 

I did it all on one PC - we had a list of staff usernames and passwords to hand so we could exactly mirror the new setup too. This however might not be workable for all if they're (understandably) not willing to give up passwords.

Downloaded all the original emails first from all the accounts then went back through as I set the new ones up one by one. Only 15 staff, still took a couple of hours.

 

And heh @ Capita's 3 emails for the price of 1 - that thoroughly annoys me! Then again, Capita thoroughly annoys me.

[synaesthesia]

Dont copy actual PSTs....

 

With both PSTs showing in Outlook, literally either drag the emails from one to the other, or right click the folder, select copy, and paste into hte other mailbox.

[Edu-IT]

The only thing I can rely on them for is to send me three emails when one would do!

Oh I know this all too well.

 

ON HOLD

 

OFF HOLD

 

CLOSED

 

OPENED

 

Oh... go away.

[synaesthesia]

Oh, by the way. It's not Capita's email. It's EMBC's.

 

I gave up trying to think about it earlier after it brought on a headache. I felt instantly better after re-reading yesterdays adult themed telephone line related news article.