Transferring PST File to Zimbra

[ibrahimayhan]

Hi,
All Mail Files are in PST Format
I've Researched But There Are Many Programs In General As Paid And Trial Version
Does Zimbra have a solution?
Looking forward to your help

[tonyg]

I'm transferring from Outlook 2010 to Zimbra FOSS Edition now. I've also been searching recently. I have found many answers. Unfortunately a lot of them seem vague and incomplete, but mostly they're just outdated.

I'm going to try to summarize this topic, explaining the confusion, and the current available solutions. I'm providing many links and references, errata and corrections, and comments related to this topic. I hope that others add notes to ensure this thread is current and accurate. If you just want to jump to what I think is the current solution, see the red text.

I have been tempted to download the PST Import Wizard. But that is "Legacy", so I'm hesitant to use it with the latest v8.8.x. (If You want to try that, read this)

This zimbra.com blog from 2017 describes the "new" Zimbra Migration Tool (ZMT). "Almost" (will come back to this) everything there says Zimbra Desktop, but I'm not running the desktop, so I needed to jump around for more info.

Get info for Zimbra Desktop here. The desktop connects to a Zimbra server (and others). But ... "The Zimbra Desktop is no longer supported. It will reach the end of Technical Guidance October 1, 2019."

Back to that blog, it says "Remember, you will need the new tool called ZCS Migration Wizard for Exchange/PST: Extract the file and execute Zimbra Migration". Very nice, but where is this tool?

Go here. Click the link "Migrating to Zimbra Collaboration Server (Single Exchange Mailbox or PST, PST to Zimbra Desktop, Multiple Exchange Mailboxes)" That goes to this (8..7.0 is most recent as of now) PDF. In that PDF, on page 6, it says "using a web browser, navigate to the URL https ://<servername>/downloads/index.html - You will find 32 and 64 bit versions of the ZMT under the section General Migration Wizard".

OK. Go to your ZCS server: https ://myserver:9999/downloads/index.html
Yay: it's a hidden web page.
Boo: what permissions are required to get the files offered from that page?
But Wait! Maybe they don't mean /downloads/index.html. Go to your Zimbra Admin dashboard, Home > Tools and Migration > Downloads. Click the link to download the tools and ... same permissions error.

OK, Google "Zimbra Utilities Downloads" (the title from the admin page) and that leads back here. On that page we find the tools!

The heading says "Zimbra Collaboration Network Edition" ... I'm running FOSS. I hope this isn't a premium feature now - I think it should be good for FOSS.

The heading also says "Zimbra Migration Wizard for Exchange" ... but right under that it says "This tool is supported only for PST file import". We'll forgive the anomaly. But it continues: "with End of Technical Guidance set for 31 December 2020. We recommend audriga’s self-service migration solution as a preferred alternative for all account migrations."

Unfortunately the Audriga offering doesn't seem to offer any privacy, moving data through their servers (?), and it doesn't look like they support PST files either. Sigh.

For now, just download the Zip for your 32bit or 64bit system.
Notice that the file name specifically says it's related to v8.8.15.

What about the Desktop thing? Notice from the screenshots that importing into Desktop is just one of three options. The second option is for importing a single user from a PST file into Zimbra over the network. Note in the PDF that it documents how to use the command-line to do imports using an XML config file. This answers the FAQ about importing lots of users from PST files into Zimbra.

This is where I need to stop. my v8.8.12_P6 tells me there are no updates available, but v8.8.15 is certainly available. Based on what I've read, including by L. Mark Stone in a great blog on the topic of upgrading, it doesn't look like we can patch up from 8.8.12 to 8.8.15. So I want to upgrade first, before I try the migration tool.

After all of that I really hope the migration tool will be able to import my current 4+GB PST. I'm going to eliminate anything older than one year and do other optimizations. I really wish we could export into files, and then import those files into Zimbra. I think we're doomed to timing and network issues with a huge amount of data.

As a developer, very familiar with the internals of Office products and Outlook in particular, and now with a decent understanding of Zimbra internals, I'd consider writing a new tool to do this, for different versions of Zimbra and Outlook, as FOSS with a small commercial fee for support during a migration event. This is a supply-and-demand problem- without enough demand there won't be supply, and without supply we don't have a good idea of how much demand there might be. Comments on this are welcome.

I hope this helps someone.

[3dfx_nostalgic]

Hi Tony
last year I was in your same situation, and I used mailstore home
it saves the pst(s) in a particular format that the program can handle
next step is to create an imap connection to your zimbra, and you are good to go!

[tonyg]

Thank you very much @3dfx_nostalgic. That could be a magic bullet. I'd much prefer to use something that already exists, than to write my own. But MailStore Home looks almost too good to be true. I'm seriously concerned about security. I almost feel a need to lock down my firewall whenever anything related to this software is running.

I'd like to ensure that I can train the server for good and bad emails after I populate Zimbra.
I'll also need to import or generate contacts.

Anyone have thoughts on all that?
Has anyone else used MailStore?

[3dfx_nostalgic]

You're welcome.
99% of outlook users doesn't use the contacts, but the autocomplete function.
for migrate it, I suggest you to use.

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/outlook_nk2_edit.html

For simple contacts migration, I suggest the normal import export functionalities of zimbra and outlook.