Case study: Exporting personal archives without the original user’s GroupWise account

[Support 2]

Case study: Exporting personal archives without the original user’s GroupWise account

Many thanks to Ian Mercier from the Medical College of Georgia Foundation Inc. for allowing us to post his Archive To Go use case.*

Background

We currently use Novell GroupWise 7.0.2. We are about to separate from our parent organization and need to take all of our email (current) and archived email with us.

We will be installing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and will be using Outlook 2003. Ultimately, we will need to get all of our user’s email from one system to the other so that it can be used in Outlook.

The Challenge

Because we are no longer have active GroupWise accounts (from our former company), it is impossible to connect to those mailboxes. The Archive To Go software asks that we launch GroupWise prior to converting our personal archives. This is not possible as there are no accounts (we have a shared group mailbox for the entire company, but not individual boxes). Our archived email is typically stored on hard drives in a folder called arcmail.

I guess my question is can we still use this product if our user accounts are already closed?

Ian’s Solution using Archive To Go

Ian’s research led to the successful process below being pieced together from reading the forums and knowledge base articles.

• You must have access to a GroupWise mailbox in order for this process to work. In our case, we had (7) users but only a single GroupWise mailbox for the entire group.
• If you have the GroupWise client installed on your machine, you may already have an archive folder (typically c:arcmail or c:of05garc). Copy the Archive folder to another location on your workstation (e.g., c:tempof05garc).
• Create a new folder: c:Archive.
• Log-in to the GroupWise client. Click Tools>Options>Environment and select the File Location tab.
• Change the archive path to C:Archive (this will create a new archive with the directory structure of C:Archiveof05qarc).
• Click OK.
• Select No to the message “Do you want to move the contents of your existing archive to your new archive” (if you receive this message).
• Select File>Open Archive. This will open the existing archive folder.
• Click File>Open Archive, which will take you back to the online mailbox.
• Create a dummy message with an attachment and then save it (don’t send) in the Work in Progress folder.
• Archive the message created in step 10.
• Click File>Open Archive. Make sure that the message created exists in the Archive.
• Exit GroupWise.
• Browse to the C:Archiveof05qarc folder using Windows Explorer.
• Check to make sure that the msg.db and ngwguard.db files exist in this folder.
• Rename msg.db to msg.bak.
• Copy the msg.db file from your original archive (C:tempof05garc) to the C:Archive folder.
• Launch GWCHECK.EXE.
• In the Database Type field, select Archive. In the Action drop-down list, click and select Re-create User Database.
• Click Run.
• Once GWCHECK has completed, log in to GroupWise, click Tools>Options>Environment and make sure that the archive directory is still C:Archive. If so, click Cancel.
• Click File>Open Archive.
• When the archive opens, click and select the Cabinet folder. You should see all of the archived emails. If they are there, exit GroupWise.
• Browse to the temporary directory where your original archived email was stored (C:tempOf05garc).
• Copy all of the files and paste them in the C:Archiveof05garc folder.
• Select No when asked if you wish to overwrite existing files.
• Once the files have been copied over, open GroupWise and then open the archive. You should see all of the archived mail.
• You may now run Archive To Go to make a copy of all of the archived mail in the primary mail box.

Since Ian wrote this procedure, Advansys released the PST Creator, which will enabled Archive To Go archives to be converted to Outlook PST files.

*Please note that Advansys has not verified Ian’s approach in-house.

[This message was edited by Support 2 on November 19, 2009 at 03:35 PM.]

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