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So, you've successfully deployed Active Directory and managed to synchronize it with Exchange 5.5 using the ADC. Everything is stable and working okay, so now you decide to install a brand new Exchange 2000 server and move the users to a brave new messaging world. You must be thinking, how do you move the users?

From looking at the help files and various Exchange 2000 books, it seems easy enough. You open Active Directory Users and Computers MMC, right click a user, choose "Exchange tasks", and "Move Mailbox", select the right information store on the right storage group, and voila, the user is magically transported to the new server. The wise and the weary amongst us know that you should also stop the ADC service using the Services MMC and disable anti-virus software on the Exchange servers.

However, in real life, things are a little more complicated at times. In Exchange 5.5 it was easy to sort users according to their server and just move them. In Active Directory, users are sorted by their Organizational Units (OUs). So now you need to move all users from server A to Server B, what do you do?

You can sort each OU by the adding a column for "Exchange mailbox store" (View > Choose Columns), but this is of little user if you have multiple OUs since you still have to go through all the OUs.

Adding Exchange Mailbox Store Column to AD Users and Computers MMC

To ease moving users you can use the find feature of the Active Directory. Right click your domain and choose Find… Go to the Advanced tab and add a field of User > Exchange Home Server > Ends with [exchange server].

Adding a filter to the find dialog box

Select a few or all users on the list and from the shortcut menu click Exchange Tasks. Select Move Mailbox and click OK.

Select the destination server and click OK.

Finally, you can copy the report at the end to a text file for your documentation papers.

Using the find option also lets you control which users you want moved. If you're planning a per-department migration, for example, you can add the department field to the find dialog box. Moving users has never been easier…