Easy Solutions to Export Exchange 2016 mailbox to PST

Exchange 2016 has reached far beyond end-of-life and will soon stop receiving any support from Microsoft. If you’re still working on Exchange 2016, it’s time to rethink your business strategy to stay competitive. You can either plan an in-place upgrade or migrate your business to upgraded versions of Exchange Server.

Most Exchange administrators often store a backup of their mailboxes within PST files to prevent losing them to unexpected circumstances. If you’re also looking to find ways to export Exchange 2016 mailboxes to PST, this article is the ideal response to your search. Let’s get to work!

Why might you need to export 2016 mailboxes?

There are many reasons why an Exchange administrator exports mailboxes from Exchange Server 2016 to PST file:

1. To decommission Exchange Server 2016 and access existing data after migration.
2. Extract data from a previous employee and store it for future purposes.
3. Archive the mailbox data in a PST file to lower the burden on the server.
4. Exchange database got corrupted, and you need to run Exchange database recovery.
5. Free up space on the Exchange Server 2016 by archiving data to PST.
6. Export emails to PST and apply password protection to keep your data encrypted.

How to export Exchange 2016 mailbox to PST?

To backup Exchange 2016 mailboxes to PST, you can use Exchange Management Shell or Exchange admin center. Let’s see the step-by-step process to export emails in detail:

Using Exchange Management Shell to save Exchange mailboxes to PST

Open Exchange Management Shell on your system and run the given commands according to your requirements:

1. Export user mailboxes to a PST file using:

New-MailboxExportRequest-Mailbox<mailbox-name>-FilePath”<destination file path>”

2. Export archive mailboxes to PST:

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox “mailbox name” -FilePath “ServerName01FolderNamenameoffile.pst” -IsArchive

3. Export mailboxes for a specific date range:

New-MailboxExportRequest -ContentFilter {(Received -lt ’03/03/2025′)-and (Received -gt ’03/05/2023′)} -Mailbox User1 -Filepath Exchange{PST}{file-name}.pst 

Using Exchange admin center to export Exchange 2016 mailboxes to PST

Here are the steps to export mailbox to PST for Exchange 2016 using EAC:

1. Create a shared network folder on your system and allow the folder Read and Write permissions.
2. Copy the path (UNC), then open Exchange admin center, and log in with the admin credentials.
3. Go to the Recipients, and then click on Mailboxes from the left pane.
4. Select the mailbox you want to export to a PST file and right-click on it.
5. Select the option Export to a PST file and then provide the file saving destination. Click Next.
6. Select or unselect the options according to your preferences and enter an email address to receive a confirmation email after completion.

With this process, you can save backup of your mailbox from Exchange 2016 to PST. However, it might show complications if you’re not well aware of the navigation of the Exchange admin center.

What is the best solution to export Exchange 2016 emails?

With the manual methods at work, you can export the emails from Exchange Server 2016, but there are certain complexities involved.

1. You need to know how to run Exchange Management Shell commands. The process might fail if you run a wrong command.
2. Without a proper understanding of the Exchange admin center, you can’t find a way to export data to PST.
3. The process is often time-consuming and can cause data loss along the way.
4. Can’t use the method if the database is corrupted.

To avoid the repercussions of manual methods, you must try out professional software that processes simple export of Exchange 2016 mailboxes. With a third-party Exchange database recovery tool, you can easily escape the possibility of errors during the process.

Conclusion

Use the Exchange Management Shell or Exchange admin center as mentioned above to export Exchange 2016 mailbox to PST. However, you cannot use these methods if the database gets dismounted, corrupted, or inaccessible. You can use professional tools like Kernel Exchange Server Recovery to repair EDB files and export emails from the Exchange 2016 mailbox. 

With an EDB to PST Converter, you can extract Exchange Server mailboxes to PST, MSG, EML, and other file formats. The tool maintains complete data integrity and folder structure throughout the export process to download mailboxes without data loss.