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How to Use Recovered Files after an Exchange Mailbox Recovery to Disk

  • This article is for Windows only

The Exchange Local Mailbox and Exchange Mailbox Online backup types can restore mailbox items to local disk in addition to restoring to an Exchange mailbox. Backups restored to local disk are restored as files in the following formats.

  • Emails - .eml
  • Contacts - .vcf
  • Calendars - .ics
  • Contact Groups - .cgp
  • Tasks - .tsk

The sections below are collapsed. Please click the section title to open / close a particular section.

How to Locate the Files after Restore

A folder must be chosen at the time of restore. After the restore completes, the chosen folder will contain a sub-folder for every mailbox restored, named after the User Principle Name of the mailbox. Each mailbox folder will contain sub-folders corresponding to folders in that mailbox, such as Inbox, Contacts, Sent, etc.

The files will be found in the same folder(s) as in the original mailbox.

How to Open and View Files

All of these files, with two exceptions, can be opened with Microsoft Outlook. If you have Outlook installed, simply double-click these files to view their contents.

The two exceptions are:

  • Contact Group files in .cgp format. These can be opened in any text editor including Notepad.
  • Task files in .tsk format. These files contain XML data and can be opened with any text editor or any other program capable of parsing XML files.
How to Import Files into an Exchange Mailbox or PST File

To restore mailbox data to Exchange, please restore your mailbox data directly to an Exchange Mailbox. The Exchange Mailbox backup types support restoration to the original mailbox or an alternate mailbox. This is the easiest way to restore your mailbox data to Exchange.

If a direct restore to Exchange is not possible and the files are restored to disk, the task of importing the restored files into Exchange or PST file is complex. Microsoft Outlook does not provide a native way to import these files into an Exchange Mailbox or PST file format.

As a courtesy, we have included two methods to import the restored files below. However, the act of importing files on disk into Exchange or PST file is beyond the scope of Carbonite support.

Please choose the import method that applies to your situation:

Import with Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail

The Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail software can accept these restored files. Simply drag and drop the files into the program and use the Export Mail wizard to export the files to Exchange.

Import with Third-party Software

Third-party tools also exist which can import these files into Exchange or PST format. As an example, the Import Messages from EML Files software is free and can import .eml files to PST or Exchange.

Note: Carbonite does not endorse or provide support for any third party software. Please use your preferred software.

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