Computer Related > Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts Miscellaneous
Thread Author: RattleandSmoke Replies: 11

 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - RattleandSmoke
Got a tricky job on Wednesday. A client wants to change his email host but also uses IMAP. This is because the hard drive failed on one of the servers and he lost all his emails but the host did eventually find the 'backup'. His trust in the current host has now vanished.

I don't have much experience with IMAP but if I simply move the PST file (to his new computer) and then it up with the new email system what will happen to the synchroisation of the old files? I am very nervious when the old host is disconnected all his emails will vanish again because of the way IMAP works.

Or will outlook realise its a new host and not attempt to resynchronise and leave the files as they are? I will make backups of the PSTs before I move over to the new system but I want to make sure nothing goes wrong in the first place.

Has anybody had any experience of this? If this was POP3 it wouldn't be an issue as I am always migrating POP accounts but this is the first time I've had to it with IMAP.
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - rtj70
You haven't mentioned which version of why email client he is using. From reference to PST I assume it's Outlook but the version helps.

If it's a PST file then it has nothing to do with synchronising emails. PST are for emails you've received and moved into an archive. I have a few PST and moving them to a new laptop or if it gets rebuilt is not a problem. In fact moving to Outlook 2007 on Windows 7 from Outlook 2003 on XP, I just copied over the PST files and then opened them. For my live mailbox in Outlook it will have resynchronised.
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - car4play
Can you clarify the situation because I am confused as to whether it is the host's server that has failed and so lost all the emails, or your client's computer and hence the reference to the "his new computer"?
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - RattleandSmoke
OK I will clarify the situtation.

Client was using his wifes computer, wife was not happy client bought a new one. No email accounts have been set up on this yet.

Old PST is on wifes laptop will need moving to new one (not a problem).

My clients hose server went down so there was no mail on the server Outlook 2003 synchronised with this and all his email in his PSTs were lost until his host restored the backup.

What I am worried about is when I move the PST over it will synch with the IMAP host and loose all the existing emails from the PST like it did when the server went down.

Edit the PST is current on outlook 2003 but it will be on 2007 when its moved over to the new system.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Mon 2 Aug 10 at 14:17
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - rtj70
I'm confused how the loss of the email on the hosting service lost email in a PST file. Do you mean PST? Do you mean OST? But if he had an OST he'd have had copies of the emails.

I do not think I would trust leaving my emails only copy on a server I had no control over. Maybe if it was one run by a large company I could rely on.

On Outlook, which I use for work emails off an Exchange server, I have setup offline working which means I have a cached copy of emails on my machine so can access them offline.

For personal emails I used to use Outlook. And the approach I preferred was to use POP3 to download emails (so I have a copy) but set it up to leave a copy on the server for around 30 days allowing me to still see them via the web interface (working away etc). Might be worth trying.

As I say, taking an Outlook 2003 created PST and opening it in Outlook 2007 works. I cannot comment on whether you could take an OST file and do the same though.
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - RattleandSmoke
It will be an OST, I guess I need to try and export those files into a PST file.
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - Tooslow
R, from my limited experience as a one time user of Exchange/Outlook (and out of date since I stopped working) rjt70 is spot on.

The PST file(s) are on your pc and hold emails that you have moved into a folder on your pc. There should be no correspondence with anything on a server, so what happens to the server is irrelevant. You can have one or more PST, each having different contents.

You can set up "offline working" which means that your emails download/upload from Inbox / Sent folders, when you connect to Exchange. It's a standard way of working for anyone with a business laptop.

JH
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - car4play
ok I think I understand now.

IMAP essentially stores all email on the host server. All the email client does is effectively browse an email listing from the server and then on read sends you the contents of each message. But the emails are on the remote server. Webmail is effectively a web-based IMAP client. So if you can see the emails on the hosts webmail facility (if they have one) then the host emails are ok. All you have to do is set up a new IMAP email on the new computer and it will simply browse the remote emails just like webmail.

However, there is often a setting on IMAP clients whereby the client can store a local copy of the IMAP listing and email contents so that if you don't have an internet connection you can still read old emails. If this was on, then you will be able to move them to the new computer. I don't know the full details for Windows, but it is along the lines you and RTJ suggest.
Once configured it won't sync back up to the remote host, but only pull down any new messages.

If this was not on, then you have no local copy and if the host server also had lost them then you also have no remote copy either. The best you can do is simply set up a new IMAP account on the new computer.
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - RattleandSmoke
This is exactly the problem. The client wants to keep his email address but move it to another company, because his emails are on the server and not locally I am scared stiff once the DNS and other details have been changed on the domain there will be no way of accessing this files. I wonder if I could simply do a select all and export the emails as is to save them locally?

It cannot be difficult to do but I can't find much information on google and I can't really play around on the clients computer because the consquences could be a disaster.

I will speak to his new host (which is a massive company and support the NHS etc) and see what they advice doing.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Mon 2 Aug 10 at 15:18
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - rtj70
What you could do is tell him that he should have a local copy of his emails. Create a PST file and drag and drop the emails into there. This will move the emails to PST. I do this all the time with work emails because of the size limit on the Exchange server (couple hundred Mb).

This is using some of the functionality of Outlook which I assume you're not overly familiar with.

Edit: if he's moving his email address to another provider then he has to do the above. Once he closes his email account with his current provider he would lose his emails. Unless he was using an OST.

I would not risk moving an OST from Outlook 2003 to 2007... go down the PST route. And if he's moving an email address then he may want to do this because moving his DNS name to another service provider will have downtime.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 2 Aug 10 at 15:36
 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - teabelly
With imap all emails are on the server. If you change server host then all those emails in that inbox will disappear unless you downloaded them first. I assume outlook as something akin to local folders? If so then you copy the contents of all the imap email folders inbox, saved folders, sent etc into a local area that outlook can see. Then when dns changes you'll start to see the empty email inbox start to fill up with new email. Once that is done you could copy all the old email into the same location in the new imap server. Leave the settings the same and change them to the new email settings for the new host. Before you change dns switch off the mail services on the old host. This way those places that take ages to get new server changes won't be able to send to the old host. Just the new one. If they don't wait long enough messages should bounce rather than disappearing into the ether.

I use imap email but I copy emails down to local folders every so often and they're backed up. I use thunderbird though and that saves all email in unix mbox format rather than some proprietary format.

 Moving an IMAP PST file and changing hosts - RattleandSmoke
Thanks :). I am now probably going away Thursday to Monday (I shouldn't keep drunkenly promise friends I will got o festivals!) so there is no way I can do this job on Wednesday now. I will simply have a look at backup options.

When I was last there the emails had all disappeared so the job just involved transfering the old PST files across and not the new emails which were hosted on IMAP. Now the old mail have turned up it makes the job harder as I need to keep them. I cannot do a major job like changing email servers and then not be contactable for four days.

As for clients email is fully working at the moment I will simply do a backup of what is there now on Wednesday before doing the job fully next week.
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