Moving Folders between users

[plan9]

I have a user who has left the company. Does Zimbra offer any mechanism to move her folders to the mailbox of another user?

[soxfan]

Someone might come up with an easier way, but I'd just set up Thunderbird with both old and new IMAP accounts. Then drag-and-drop folders from one account to the other. Obviously not very automated, but it does afford you the opportunity to do a little housecleaning on the old account before doing the copy.

[Guest6400]

This would be a really nice feature as I've had to do this several times. Our way to do it was to just give the New User temp access to the Old User's Zimbra account(temp meaning until they don't need to see those emails).

The other way we were doing it is to setup the Old User in Outlook with the connector. Then you export to a PST. Then run an import as the New User and the folders should replicate properly.

The only thing I'd warn against is using the Import/Export built into Outlook as it will make any imported emails have the same date/time(the time of import).

Hopefully this helps a bit.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by plan9

I have a user who has left the company. Does Zimbra offer any mechanism to move her folders to the mailbox of another user?

No, there's nothing like that in Zimbra. As soxfan said, Thunderbird - two accounts, drag 'n' drop. It should take you about five minutes to set it up plus the copy time.

[area]

I looked at this issue in the last few days and explored the option of exporting a user's mail folders and importing them under a folder of another user (such as the admin user). My aim was to do the export/import completely on the server and with a view to automating the 'move' operation.

My summary of the export/import options is below. There is no easy or perfect way of doing this and after all this testing, I think I will use Thunderbird to transfer the folders.

Exporting can be done two ways:

a) using the zmmboxsearch command on the user's account with a query of 'before today''; this dumps
all emails from all folders into the one directory with file names like:

00502_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_466
00500_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_467
00501_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_465
00498_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_468
00499_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_469
00497_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_471
00494_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_473
00495_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_472
00496_bf1458f7-e1aa-4dd4-addd-04f65331093d_470

It doesn't preserve folder structures. An example command to dump all the emails from all folders
for a user to /var/tmp/ would be:

su - zimbra -c "zmmboxsearch --query 'before:today' --mbox fred@yourcompany.com --dir /var/tmp/fred --limit 9999"

b) using a REST URL from either a browser or the command line using the wget command: eg:

wget --no-check-certificate --http-user=fred@yourcompany.com --http-passwd=password \
"https://zimbra.yourcompany.com/zimbra/home/fred@yourcompany.com/Inbox.zip"

However, this can only be done on a per-folder basis - there is a parameter in the specifications
to get all folders ('recursive=1') but the server responds with 'not implemented yet'.

Question to Zimbra folks - any update on when this option will be available?

You could write a script to list all the email folders for a user and then run wget for each folder
so that you would end up a .zip file for each folder.


Importing to a new folder on another account can be done from both types of export:

a) directly from the directory of email messages saved by zmmboxsearch: eg:

su - zimbra -c "zmmailbox -z -m admin@yourcompany.com"
createFolder /Fred
addmessage /Fred /var/tmp/fred

b) unzipping each .zip file to a folder (the folder structure is recorded in the .zip file) and then
importing each folder one at a time:

cd /var/tmp
unzip /tmp/Inbox.zip
su - zimbra -c "zmmailbox -z -m admin@yourcompany.com"
createFolder /Fred
addmessage /Fred /var/tmp/Inbox

However, the received date of all the messages is set to today; ie: the date the message was received. I did once write a script to update the received date in the MySQL database to the date from the Date: header of the email.

[jholder]

Just as a note, the zmmboxsearch tool is network edition only.

Question to Zimbra folks - any update on when this option will be available?

Moving folders between users?
In 5.0, we'll have sharing between users, I realize this isn't exactly the same thing, but it's a step in the right direction.

Is there an enhancement for this? I couldn't find it. If there isn't, file one. If there is, get your friends to vote on it. That's how we decide what gets in and what doesnt.

john

[area]

My question to the Zimbra folks was regarding the 'recursive=1' option to a REST URL which is listed in the REST specifications but the response from the Zimbra server is 'not implemented yet'.

Any update on when this option will be available?

Alternatively, is there some other way to get all a user's emails from all folders using REST?

[mmorse]

Both your questions can be answered by this thread: /forums/administrators/12003-mail-backup-options-end-users.html

[ewilen]

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that thread addresses migrating non-mail data between accounts. So I've created Bug 39959 - RFE: transfer folder to different user / move folders between accounts