If you have worked with Exchange for a long time, you have probably used utilities, such as ExMerge or the Exchange 2007 Management Shell, to import and export data between mailboxes and PST files. While these tools were useful for their time, they had some limitations. For example, ExMerge was the main import and export utility, starting with Exchange 5.5 and continuing on to Exchange 2003, but it was difficult to automate. Exchange 2007 included the Import-Mailbox and Export-Mailbox cmdlets that made it easier to automate these tasks through PowerShell scripts. Unfortunately, the Export-Mailbox cmdlet required both a 32-bit workstation running the 32-bit version of the Exchange 2007 Management tools and Microsoft Outlook 2003 Service Pack 2 or later.

With the release of Exchange 2010 and 2013, we have a new set of cmdlets that can be used to manage the import and export operations for Exchange mailboxes. These new cmdlets have no dependencies on a management...