Using ExMerge to Extract Messages from a Corrupted Mailbox Store (328754)

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If a mailbox store becomes corrupted, you can use ExMerge to recover all of the data that has not been corrupted. If you can start the Information Store service, you can run ExMerge.exe against the corrupted mailbox store. ExMerge copies and transfers uncorrupted data for all users on the corrupted mailbox store to personal folder (.pst) files. After you run ExMerge, you can reset the Information Store service, and then import the .pst files to a mailbox store that has not been damaged.

You can use ExMerge to recover all of the uncorrupted data even if individual mailbox folders contain corrupted messages. Typically, ExMerge extracts all of the messages in a mailbox folder collectively to minimize remote procedure call (RPC) traffic. However, if a particular message causes an error, ExMerge automatically skips that message, and then begins to copy the messages that remain in the folder individually. Even though the process of copying messages individually increases network traffic, this process helps ExMerge bypass the corrupted data. After ExMerge finishes copying each message individually in the mailbox folder that contains the corrupted message, the tool resumes copying messages collectively in other mailbox folders until another error occurs.

ExMerge.exe and the documentation for this tool are available on the Exchange CD in the Support\Utils\I386\Exmerge folder.

For additional information about ExMerge.exe, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: