View Emails directly on Exchange Server 2013

[PaulTech]

Last year the onsite Exchange Server 2013 was migrated to a Hosted Exchange Solution. As part of the process each account was exported to a PST file. There is a need to revisit the offline Server which is still sitting at the location to see if there are older emails. If I boot the server without a network connection what is the process to view emails directly on the Exchange Server? Are there any email cache locations to check. I don't see how this would find any more emails but I'd like input if there is a way to find additional emails. Thanks!

 

[JohnKennex]

you could use the local owa on localhost to login and view the mailboxes - I assume you haven't removed them from inventory.

 

[PaulTech]

Thanks for your reply. The title should have been Exchange Server 2010. I ended up doing the following in case it helps someone else.

1. Boot server and make sure all the MS Exchange services are running. (Do not connect to the internet if a retired Server to avoid sending out emails that might still be queued.)
2. In The Exchange Mgmt Shell run: New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role "Mailbox Import Export" –User Administrator
NOTE: this was missing in most of the online helps. If you assign the role to Administrator be sure to "run as Administrator" the Exchange Mgmt Shell!
3. New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox <username> -FilePath <pstFilePath>

Step 3 will extract the mailbox to a PST File. It only accepts a share path so in my case I created c:\temp then created a share giving the Administrator full privileges.

And of course, if you just need to see a few emails you can use the localhost OWA.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah the title threw things off...asking to "view emails directly on Exchange..."
My answer right off was OWA also.
The steps you did export a mailbox to a portable database (but you state in the original post that you already exported each mailbox to a PST)...allowing you to take it and view elsewhere. You're still not viewing the emails until to take it to another workstation and open it with Outlook.
You should never install Outlook on an Exchange server...can break some Exchange functions.

A great tool for going into Exchange stores and ripping out multiple mailboxes to PSTs is software from Kroll Ontrack.

 

[HCHTech]

Ahh, remember Exmerge? That was a great tool - and native too. Too bad they didn't fix that up to work with the newer versions of Exchange.