Stellar Converter for EDB: Effortlessly Migrate Exchange Mailboxes to PST or Office 365

Steps to Export Exchange Mailboxes to PST or Office 365 with Stellar Converter for EDB.

We have seen a lot of applications that can extract data from Microsoft’s Exchange Server in the market, but it seems that each application would have something missing which might be in another application or something would be more useful if it was different.

In this article we will be delving inside Stellar Converter for EDB which is recommended by most MVPs and from how it is advertised, it has all the features and options that an Exchange Server administrator needs like exporting data from live/offline databases, export to PST and use it as a migration tool to a new Exchange Server or Office 365. We will also consider that native tools within our Exchange Server installation in comparison.

Why not use the native tools?

Microsoft Exchange Admin Center (EAC)
Microsoft Exchange Admin Center (EAC)

We have native tools in our Exchange Server that we can use to extract the data from the databases with. There is the option to use Outlook itself to extract the data, but we will not mention this as it is a lengthy process and not so reliable. With the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), we can export a mailbox to PST in the Recipients section.

Although one might need the right permissions and the export criteria and filtering is limited. Alternatively, one can use the New-MailboxExportRequest in the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) PowerShell window, which has a little bit more filtering criteria, but still limited, and you need to script the export.

Exchange Management Shell
Exchange Management Shell.

Both methods work as mentioned above, but you will not be able to export public folders and disabled mailboxes with limited options. The biggest point of failure is that you need a working Exchange Server along with the source databases online.

Installation Process

The installation is easy. You will need to head over to the website and download the installation file from EDB to PST Converter Software.

Once this is done, you will get the installation file, which is about 40MB in size. Do not worry about the size as although it’s a small application, it’s very powerful.

Stellar Converter for EDB - EDB to PST Converter Software.
Stellar Converter for EDB – EDB to PST Converter Software.

Once the download is done, just open the installation file and after a few clicks, the installation will be complete.

What can Stellar Converter for EDB do?

With this application, we can easily export data from the Exchange Server databases. This doesn’t stop at user mailboxes, as we can easily export User mailboxes, User Archives, Shared Mailboxes, Disabled mailboxes and even Public Folders.

There is no size limit on the databases you attach and there is no need to have an Exchange Server online. Really? Seems strange, but yes, if you have a standalone EDB file, you will be able to open it and export with no issues.

This means if you restored a database file from and old backup from a previous decommissioned server, you will be able to export data from it. This can be used when having a hardware failure or operating system failure.

You can also improve the export by loading up multiple databases at once. If your database is online, you can easily open the live databases in your Exchange Server to extract the data.

Live databases in your Exchange Server.
Live databases in your Exchange Server.

You can also use the tool as a migration tool to either another Exchange Server or even to Office 365.

When migration from Exchange Server 2010 to the newest Exchange Server, you need to hop to another version like Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016 before migrating to Exchange Server 2019.

This would involve a lot of expenses and time, but with Stellar Converter for EDB, you can easily export from the Exchange Server 2010 directly to the new Exchange Server. Once you have granularly selected the mailboxes and resources to export, you can easily click on the save button as below.

Save in Exchange Server
Save in Exchange Server.

After this, you will be given the option to what to export. You can save the selections as PST or other file formats; you can export to a live Exchange Server or to Office 365. As you can also see, you can export to public folders.

Export to Exchange Server or to Office 365.
Export to Exchange Server or to Office 365.

Exporting directly to an Exchange Online or Exchange Server comes with some extra feature which are parallel exports to increase the extraction performance as well as the priority exports which will let you select the important resources so that these will be exported first.

There is also the option to automatic mailbox matching from the source to the destination. Of course, you will have the option to edit the entries to manually assign the destination mailbox.

Destination mailboxes status
Destination mailboxes status.

Once the mapping is done, the application will give you a full status screen of the exports and if the process is interrupted in any way, it will continue where it was.

Destination mailboxes processing
Destination mailboxes processing.

Now, the performance is quite remarkable when it comes to data extraction and import. Of course, it will mostly depend on the performance of the server, network and internet connection being used, but the application has an in-built parallel export mechanism that will allow the system to increase the performance/speed of the exports.

If for any case the export is interrupted, there is no issue, as it will continue where it left before being stopped.

As a migration tool, its compatibility is full of any version of Exchange Server, from 5.5 to the latest with no issues to use any. With Office 365, migrations are seamless and you will not get any different mailbox root like some other applications where all data will be in a folder called Top of Information Store. The data will be the same as it was visible in Outlook by the user.

Licensing

The application comes into two versions being the Corporate and Toolkit. The Corporate option which has all the options mentioned above has a limitation of 50 mailboxes with a 1-year license. The other corporate option has the same features, but it is limited to 500 mailboxes.

The Toolkit option is a huge leap in the licensing as apart from having an unlimited number of mailboxes, it comes bundled with Stellar Repair for Exchange, Converter for OST files, Extraction tool from Exchange server backups, and recovery of passwords of Microsoft Exchange and operating system. The pricing of each option is as follows:

  • Corporate with 50 mailboxes – $299
  • Corporate with 500 mailboxes – $399
  • Toolkit with unlimited mailboxes and bundle – $699

Verdict

As we have seen from the above, This EDB to PST Converter Software has a very good and easy interface to work with. It has all the compatibility that one would need as you can open offline/online databases from any version going back to the Exchange Server 5.5.

Stellar Converter for EDB can export anything, being user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, user archives, public folders, and disabled mailboxes. You can export directly to Office 365 or a new Exchange Server database.

You can open multiple EDB files being online or offline. It has all the features that an Exchange Administrator would need for the day-to-day operations and, with the Toolkit edition, you will have all you need for any eventuality.

We have tested the applications, and it has a lot of strengths which are mentioned above. The only thing we can comment on is the price, but apart from that, we haven’t found any issues with the application and we recommend it to any Exchange Server administrator.

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