imap login for specific user with admin creds

[artimus]

I was in the middle of planning my second zimbra migration, this time from exchange 2003 to zimbra 5. Unfortunately I ended up in a situation where I was forced to do the migration prematurely. Exchange (2003 standard) hit it's maximum storage size. A ESE defrag was just done recently the last time this happened. SP2 was not installed, and I was not willing to take the risk in applying it.


I now have zimbra as the primary mail server, and all old mail on the exchange server. They are not using imap on exchange, and everyones mailboxes are in different places. Some are on exchange and some are on local computers and file servers. They are all using outlook to view their old mail.

This is a very small number of users, so what I would like to do is setup the zimbra account in outlook, and copy paste the mail over. I'm hoping that the timestamps won't get messed up (as they did in another migration to zimbra 4).



Does anyone know how to setup outlook to log in as a specific user, using an administrator account? Or is it easier to change the users password.

[dwmtractor]

It's definitely easier to change a password. If I understand the process you just want to have multiple accounts set up in your IMAP client and move messages from account A's folder to account B's folder. I've done that many times with Outlook Express and Thunderbird. I've found it works a bit better in TBird than it does in OE but both will get the job done. Never tried it with Outlook so I can't tell you if there are any special joys to be found in using it, but the principle works.

Cheers,

Dan

[artimus]

pretty much.. The reason why i'm using outlook is that many users have there mail in local pst files rather then on the exchange server. My only option is to use outlook, and copy paste them into a zimbra imap account.

i did try the pst import tool that came w/ zimbra... I tried it on an account with only 1 email. It basically ate all the remaining ram on the server, and then windows crashed

[dwmtractor]

I dunno about copy/paste; if you try to do that to too many things at once you could pretty quickly suck up resources on the client computer. With OE you can't drag and drop folders (just messages), but with Thunderbird you can even move nested folders; again, I don't know what you can do with Outlook (my friends and I call it LookOut, if that gives you some sense of my desires vis-a-vis Outlook and any computer I control ) I'm not trying to convert everyone to Thunderbird (honest! ) but I have found that for dragging whole folders full of messages from account-to-account it's the easiest program I've used.

Actually Thunderbird has the capability of importing Outlook mail if it's installed on the system. . .at least sometimes. I also found this thread where someone who had trouble with importing Outlook files imported the pst file into Outlook Express and then imported the mail from OE into Thunderbird.

One warning, HOWEVER you do your imports, be sure that your users, or the Class of Service they're in, have big enough quotas (and message/attachment size quotas) to permit the messages and folders you are trying to import. When I did my original migration, I ran into headaches when a message was too big, or when the folder got full. In neither case did the error in my IMAP client tell me "you idiot, that's too big." It was always some obscure error that made no sense to me. . .

[artimus]

Ha, please don't get me wrong. Any company who is serious about software knows that you can't inferior products. When it comes to email we need ease of use, administration, support, and stability. We don't have the time or interest in using or supporting poorly written applications. We need something that just works out of the box. To support this, we have a company policy that strictly prohibits the use of MS Outlook, any many other Microsoft products.

This migration is for another company, whom will be required to remove Outlook from all computers on the network. The only use for outlook, is to copy the messages which is stored in it. I may add, this is also the only use for the Exchange Server. For email we allow TB, and zimbra webmail only.

[dwmtractor]

Originally Posted by artimus

Any company who is serious about software knows that you can't inferior products
(snip)
To support this, we have a company policy that strictly prohibits the use of MS Outlook, any many other Microsoft products.

I gotta say you gave me a good Friday afternoon laugh with that one!

Seriously, if I were in your shoes I would install Thunderbird on those machines and see if it will correctly import the Outlook messages. If so, you have an easy path to move them from local folders to the server--just drag & drop the folders. If not, try moving through OE as described in the thread I referenced above.

Cheers,

Dan