Category Archives: Tools

Product Review: Stellar Repair for MS SQL Database

SQL, Tools January 14, 2019 Leave a comment

According to Embarcadero Technologies’ Database Survey Report, 83% of respondents say that they have Microsoft SQL database environment. The widespread adoption of SQL database is attributed to its growing application scope and relevance in the modern enterprise IT setup. However, like other database applications, SQL Server also faces tuning and performance issues despite the Database Administrators’ (DBAs) efforts to maintain optimal performance.

Hardware and software issues turn SQL database inaccessible, which is due to the following reasons:

  • Network failure issue when database is accessed by a user
  • Storage media corruption leading to corrupt MDF files
  • Changes on SQL server account
  • Corruption in File Header and more
Continue reading →

Product Review – Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server

Product Review, Tools September 4, 2018 Leave a comment

Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server – Product Review

Exchange administrators face a wide range of nightmarish scenarios through their working career. Handling corrupted databases, restoring files from backup, extracting data from an old employee’s computer are some examples of situations that every Exchange administrator wants to avoid because they are complex and time-consuming. Unfortunately, they end up facing these scenarios more often than they like.

But the good news is there are tools like Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server that can make your job a lot easier.

What is Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server?

This is a handy tool to have in your arsenal as it is designed to extract data from clean EDB files and to connect directly to the Exchange environment. It can also be used to mass export data from an existing environment to other formats like PST.

Features

Let’s look at some of its prominent features to get an idea of what it can do for Exchange administrators like us.

  • Converts a mailbox from EDB format to other formats such as PST, MSG, EML, HTML, RTF and PDF
  • You can convert multiple mailboxes
  • Gives you the option to search for a particular content in your mailbox. The filters are advanced and offer a ton of flexibility.
  • Converts archives mailboxes to PST
  • Compatible with many versions of Exchange Server.

These features have been tremendously helpful for many Exchange administrators.

Ideal situations

This tool is handy because it saves time and effort in many common situations and problems. Here are a few where this tool would prove to be invaluable for you.

Extract Mailboxes

This is the most perfect tool to extract mailboxes from EDB file to PST. As an administrator, this extraction task has been an integral part of my working life, and Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server saves a lot of time for me. It also takes away the mundane side of the job.

One aspect I truly love is its user interface which is almost identical to the Mailbox Extractor tool. So, there is nothing much to learn or experiment here; everything is fairly straightforward.

Mass Exports

Another ideal situation for this tool is when you want to do mass exports from the existing environment to PST and other formats. Our organization often uses this tool for migration, where we export mailboxes from one Exchange environment to another.

Though these are some of the prominent uses of Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server, you can end up using it in many other situations as well.

Installation and Use

A salient feature of this tool is its easy interface.

Extracting content from mailboxes and exporting them to other formats is extremely complicated. But this tool masks the complexity behind a simple and intuitive user-interface. As a result, you simply stare at good looking screens, oblivious of what’s happening in the background.

This way, you are not only spared of the complex processes, but this interface makes it highly usable for anyone. You don’t have to be an Exchange administrator with many years of experience and in-depth knowledge to use it. Even novices can use this tool comfortably.

With all that said, let us briefly see how we can use this tool.

When you double-click on the exe file, the installation wizard starts the process. There is really nothing much for you to do, as the wizard takes care of everything.

After installation, when you open the tool, you’re given two choices to start off. You can either open an offline EDB file or connect to Online Exchange.

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You can even view the folder structure of each mailbox and the contents within each folder on the left hand side pane. As you expand the tree structure, you can navigate your way.

You can right-click the folders at any time and you’ll be given a set of formats to which you can convert.

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These formats give you a ton of flexibility to view and migrate your data at any time.

Another cool aspect about this tool is that you can view individual mails, contacts, notes, attachments and pretty much everything else stored in your EDB files.

There are even search criteria that help you to zone in on the messages you want to see.

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The search feature is advanced and helps you to quickly find what you want. The available fields include:

  • To
  • From
  • CC
  • Subject
  • Text in the body or email
  • Attachment name or file extension
  • Date range

Once you find the content you want, you can convert it into any of the recognized formats. Simply choose your content and select ‘Save’ or ‘Right Click on tree item’ in any of the following formats.

  • PST
  • MSG
  • EML
  • RTF
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • Office 365

Alternately, you can export the contents to a Live Exchange Server directly. In fact, you’ll be able to connect to an individual mailbox or all mailboxes, depending on your scenario.

Overall, Stellar Mailbox Extractor for Exchange Server is a great tool that eases the work of Exchange administrators and this is why it makes sense to have this tool on hand always. Its simple interface and powerful capabilities are sure to make exporting data from Exchange mailboxes a breeze and hassle-free task.

This tool would definitely be a major help in environments where the backup solution and exchange have been decommissioned on older exchange databases, which was taken 10 years back.Due to critical legal requirements there might be a need to extract mailbox or particular email from an employee who was resigned 10 years back. All we need is the older backup tapes should have this edb file and we can bring them to clean shutdown even if they are not present in that state and extract users data with no hassle with this tool.

Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager – Product Review

Tools June 4, 2016 1 Comment

For one of my colleague customer project  where the database was corrupted and they did not have any backup in their environment. He reached me for a help and suggestion to recover this data.

So what  we all did in that situation is, searched online for a solution, and came across Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager. After a short trial I quickly determined that it would do what we  needed enable me to restore this data quickly and easily. I found this solution specifically helped me with both the data recovery, Exchange to Office 365 migration and the backup/restore. Let me share with you my experience of using Lepide.

How Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager works

There are two main components of Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager; the source and the destination. Before proceeding for Exchange recovery, both source and the destination must be specified.

Adding Source

  1. It gives you multiple options to select your source. After Exchange corruption, I was left with an offline EDB file only so I added it as a source.

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  1. After selecting the source type, the following dialogue box appeared.

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  1. There were two ways to add EDB files.
  • Select the EDB files manually: To select the EDB files manually, click on the Browse button and then select the location where the EDB file is stored.

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  • Search for EDB: Search the computer and shared locations to add the EDB files.
  1. Click on the Search button to access the search dialog box.
  2. Click on the Browse button to select the location. After selecting the location click on the Go button.
  3. Then click on the Search button to start the search.

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  1. Select the desired EDB file from the result displayed and then click OK.

 

  1. Select the EDB scanning mode and then select the next button. There are two types of EDB scanning:

 

  • Standard Scan: If your EDB file is less corrupted or if you just want to migrate the data from a working offline EDB file to any destination then you can opt for Standard scan.
  • Deep Scan: If the EDB file is severely corrupted, large sized, or oversized, then you can opt for deep scan.

I simply opted for Standard scan, which is also a recommended method for scanning.

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  1. Click on the Next button to start the scanning process. After the successful completion of scanning, the following wizard appeared.

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  1. Click on the Finish button to complete the process.
  2. The selected offline EDB files will be showed in the Source List.

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Adding Destination

  1. I then needed to export the mailboxes in the EDB to another Live Exchange Server, so I selected Live Exchange Server as a destination (there are other destinations options as well, as shown below):

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2. After selecting the destination, the following wizard will appear.

It gives you five ways to add mailboxes and public folders as destination. I was having multiple mailboxes, so I opted for connect multiple mailboxes option.

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3. To get the list of mailboxes, establish the connection with the Exchange Server.

4. After the successful connection, the user mailbox list appeared onscreen.

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5. The users whose mailboxes were to be recovered had to be selected in this stage and the software will connect with the respective mailboxes.

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Source List Operations

Select the folder from the source list to display the list of the messages.

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The last step was simply to copy and paste the selected mailboxes into the destination and I had all the important data in a working state all again.

There were many more options to enable you to accommodate different scenarios.

Source message operations:

  • Filter messages – to streamline mailbox items and move only required items
  • Sort messages
  • Copy messages – to copy and paste individual items, folders or entire mailboxes
  • Export messages – into PST or EML formats
  • Extract attachments – I liked this option which allowed extracting attachments through a range of parameters.
  • Select all

Destination List Operations

  • Copy and Paste messages

This will allow you to copy the messages from the Source Message List and paste them into the Destination message List.

  • Import MSG/EML files

This will allow you to import the MSG and EML files from the disk drive to the PST files and Mailboxes of Exchange Server/Office 365.

  • Import messages from a folder

This will allow you to import the files (MSG and EML) from a folder to the PST files and Mailboxes of Exchange Server/Office 365.

Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager (Operation Logs)

One more brilliant capability of Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager is its Operation Logs which comes inbuilt with this software. With the help of Operation Logs, one can view the logs of the items such as mailboxes, folders, and messages exported/copied from the Source to the Destination or to the disk.

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Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager provided me a way to repair my corrupt databases without burning a hole in my pocket. It even didn’t used much of my resources. The process was very simple, add Offline EDB files in the source and Live Exchange Server in the destination and move the mailboxes.

Other features of Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager that attracted me were:

  • It can repair almost all aspects of your Exchange environment.
  • It has extremely powerful capabilities for search, select, preview and export features.
  • The attachments extraction feature and backup restoration.
  • With it one can even migrate their data to and from Exchange and Office 365.
  • It requires no agent installation

 

Final Verdict

It’s a very useful application and absolutely superseded my expectations. Its interface is really simple yet powerful. Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager provided a really simple way of ensuring a quick and painless recovery. It enabled me to both recover and export mailbox data and perform simple migrations. Any organization that relies heavily on exchange needs this in their arsenal to ensure that in the event of an Exchange Server failure they are able to recover with minimal disruption to service.

I certainly don’t want to get myself into a situation like this again, but it’s nice to know that if I did, Lepide Exchange Recovery Manager would be there to rescue me.

 You can reach them from the below sources:

Product page – http://www.lepide.com/exchange-manager/

Product download –   http://www.lepide.com/exchange-manager/download.html

Product Price – http://www.lepide.com/exchange-manager/buy-online.html

 

Effective MBOX to PST Converter Tool Review

Tools October 13, 2015 Comments: 3

MBOX to PST Converter Tool Review – Advantage & Drawbacks

Are you planning to migrate from Mozilla thunderbird to MS Outlook? Of course you need to convert your MBOX emails to PST, in order to access emails in Outlook. MBOX converter tool will enable you to convert emails from MBOX format to PST, so that these emails can be accessed in Outlook also. MBOX converter is smart tool capable to export MBOX files to PST/MSG/EML. This tool is capable to handle MBOX files from multiple mail clients including Mozilla thunderbird, Eudora, etc. It is an excellent tool capable to handle all variants of MBOX family in windows platform. Let’s see the application in detailed.

Things That You Should Cognize about MBOX to PST Converter at First!

Supported Platforms

MBOX files from various mail clients can be exported to PST using the MBOX converter tool. I used this software for migrating Thunderbird folders (.mbox) to MS Outlook 2013. But the software also supports a few more mail clients including Eudora, Entourage, Apple Mail, Netscape, Pocomail, etc.

The tool is compatible with all versions of Windows Operating System – 2000, 2003, 2008, XP, Vista, or Windows 7/8/8.1. The output PST files is compatible with all versions Outlook including 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013.

Note: I used this tool to migrate Thunderbird emails to MS Outlook 2013 in Windows 8.1. To evaluate in other editions you may try free edition of the software.

Pre-Requirements:

MBOX to PST converter is a standalone tool which does not require any supporting applications as I used recently for my own business. None of the mail clients are required to carry out the conversion process. The only requirement is that the user should possess an MBOX file in order to carry out the conversion process.

Performance:

Every product is valued based on in its performance. Same is with the MBOX converter tool performance values more. The tool is fast and accurate in its actions. The tool converts MBOX to PST without any data loss or file corruption. Emails along with all attributes are exported to PST without any time lag.  The number of MBOX files does not limit the performance of MBOX converter. The designed and development converter tool is done carefully in order to meet all the user requirements.

User Interface & Design:

The design and implementation of user interface of MBOX converter is very effective for all type of users. The internal design of the converter is done with optimized algorithms so that the tool works perfectly and accurately. Browsing of MBOX emails and saving the output PST are made user interactive with the GUI. All type of users can use this tool without any prior experience in file conversion.

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Prominent Features of the Software and its Working Process

 

  • Support for Multiple MBOX files

The tool is capable to export multiple MBOX files to PST in batches. Moreover the tool can process all variants of MBOX files from various mail clients. The supported mail clients include Entourage, thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc.
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  • Selective Exporting Feature

The selective exporting of files/ folders/emails is possible with the tool. The preview of the scanned emails helps the users to view and analyze the emails before exporting to PST.
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  • Retains All Properties of Emails

The converter tool maintains all the Meta properties of the emails while exporting to PST files. The attachments, date, time, from, to, subjects and all other attributes are retained with email message while converting to PST.

  • Managing of PST Files

The managing of PST files is made easy using the converter tool. The output PST files can be split to manage size of large PST files. The output PST files can be saved in desired location with specified names.
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Pros:

  1. Multiple MBOX files can be converted into PST files at once.
  2. Several email previews helps me to analyze emails in depth.
  3. Multiple Export choices is an additional benefits to use emails in other email programs.
  4. User face of the software is so simple so everyone can use the tool.

Cons:

  1. Demo version tool has a limit of 25 emails to be exported in PST file
  2. No facility to convert corrupted Thunderbird MBOX files data.
  3. Attached media files of emails can be viewed only after they are exported.

 

Price of Various Versions

The tool comes in two versions: free version and paid version. Free version is with limited capabilities. It does not allow users to name the files while saving the PST files. And only 25 items per folder can be exported with this free version. MBOX converter Software is available at three level licensing: personal/ Enterprise / Business level. This is worthy tool for just few dollars.

The Verdict:

While analyzing performance, accuracy, features, cost and various other factors of MBOX to PST converter into account I couldn’t find any serious faults in this tool. The outstanding features of MBOX converter makes it to stand different from other converter tools. So I would like to rate 9.5 out of 10 to MBOX to PST converter application. The tool possesses a simple user interface so that anyone can use it without any difficulty.

Thanks & Regards

Zora Stalin

Technology Evangelist

Systools Outlook PST recovery software

Tools December 14, 2014 Leave a comment

We should have been facing issues whenever we try to restore big PST file requests. At times these kind of requests might come for VIP users which cannot be avoided and it can come for multiple Executive/VIP users as well.

By default, the overall size of .pst and .ost files has a preconfigured limit of 50 GB in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013. And the default .pst file size limit in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003 is 20 GB.
Additionally, we can change the limit: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925

It is always recommended to size the PST file for end users so that the recovery of the PST files during any corruption and managing them would be easier.

There are few third party tools that can be used if we run out of options in these scenarios.

I just happened to explore Systools Outlook Recovery Software and found it to be useful.

Systools Outlook Recovery is a professional application designed to help you easily recover or restore emails from corrupt or damaged MS Outlook PST  files.

Let’s explore the functionality of this product and review its features.

The software can be downloaded from this location

http://www.systoolsgroup.com/outlook-recovery.html

In my case i’m downloading the demo version of this product which restricts to 25 items per folder

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Once we continue with the demo it makes the prerequisite check  which  is nothing we  just need to have Outlook installed on the PC where we are going to recover the PST files.

Recommended version of outlook –  Outlook 2007/2010 and 2013

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Once installed we have an option to select the file to recover Add file at the top

Also there is an Advanced scan option which can be used if the file is highly corrupted.

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Once we select the  corrupted PST file we have an option to view those files as shown below Normal View and Attachments

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When we select export option we have an option to export the emails in 3 different formats as shown below, also we have option to filter emails on specific time period and Splitting the large PST’s  into our desired values which i find this option to be very useful especially for the help desk team members to handle corrupted and large pst file issues.

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We have an option for the naming convention available as well when we select  only MSG and EML type.

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Finally it can be exported and saved to our desired destination.

dest

List of  features identified in this product :

  • Outlook file recovery is performed on the deleted emails of Outlook too.
  • The PST database which is broken can also be retrieved with the SysTools Outlook Recovery software application.
  • The tool is capable of recovering PST files that have acquired error messages like 0x80040119 or 0x80040600.
  • The entire Outlook mailbox recovery of the database of PST folder is performed along with the email folders, contacts, tasks, calendars etc.
  • We have an option to split a large PST files into multiple smaller ones.
  • Exporting and saving the PST files in different email formats.
  • All types of datas including calendar, Contacts, emails and tasks can be recovered
  • It can recover data from an encrypted PST file
  • Easy user friendly Graphical User Interface which can be understood by help desk team.

Pricing and Cost Factor:

Systools Outlook recovery software is available in 2 versions the demo and the full version.

Demo version is limited to 25 items per folder and the full version has no limitations on the number of items per folder , size of the PST/OST files and number of users.The cost of the full version is 49$ . I feel the full version will be definitely useful for help desk team which will be more beneficial and appropriate solution especially for large  PST corrupted cases in daily operations.

Thanks 

Sathish Veerapandian

MVP – Exchange Server 

MailXaminer Forensic email investigation tool

Tools December 8, 2014 Leave a comment

Mailxaminer is a forensic mail recovery tool designed for finding and reviewing the email evidence

It helps legal firms in reducing the time and cost factor by searching data by particular keywords.

By this we would be able to recover deleted emails preview emails in HTML,RTF,MIME,and hex Format

It has exporting and sharing capabilities as well.

With its user-friendly interface, the application enables us to open as many e-mails as we want and export them to EML, MSG, PDF or HTML format so that e-mails can be easily analyzed. We can open all our email investigation on a case to case basis and store these cases as well.

By doing this we would be able to have a record of our email investigation as well as pull these details in future whenever required.

This tool has the live Exchange server mailbox analysis. The tool forensically scans the entire exchange database and let you find everything which is related to your search parameter.

In what scenarios and which organizations can use SysTools MailXaminer?

Digital Investigators: When they are involved in a Cyber-Crime Case where they need to gather evidences and find the truth in fixing and completing the case.

Law Enforcement Agencies: These agencies are faced with an increasing number of cases in which emails form the bulk of evidence.

Corporate Companies: With employees communicating inside and outside their enterprise through emails, the management needs clever tools to monitor messages for operational intelligence and evidence of malpractices. This could include forewarning of employees’ eminent departure from this job, to harassment, threats and victimization, to data theft and information leakages.

Below are the lists of identified Main features in MailXaminer:

1) Support for multiple e-mail formats

2) Recover corrupted e-mails

3) Mail view options

4) Import cases

5) Remove duplicate e-mails

In this article lets install and explore the product functionality.

The installation of the product is pretty much straight forward with no prerequisite required and its the normal  hassle free next next – finish standard installation.

The trail version can be downloaded from the below link

http://www.mailxaminer.com/download.html

Just open the application

We have the below options

1) Create Case

2) Scan File

3) Search

4) Export

mail1

We have an option to choose create a new case as well as open recent cases as shown beloow

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Click on file and select open to choose the source file from which we need to investigate

Below are the supported email files from which we would be able to open  the files

systools-mailxaminer_149383(2)

Since we have multiple source files to choose in my case im jsut selecting pst file option to explore the functionality

Once we choose the file it calculates the size of the file, count of the items and displays the result as shown below

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Once synchronization of pst is done we can see the emails and have an option to see the emails in different formats as well as shown below.

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Example of email hop view

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We have an option to export these emails as well

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Supported email systems :

This product can be connected to live mailboxes running on versions   Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013. But the file types supported are the same as shown in the supported email files.

I find this tool more user-friendly ,easy to operate, able to navigate through different email source files and minimal cost of ownership of this tool .Overall Systools will help us  to examine e-mails and analyze accurate results in any email investigation tasks without the need of external agencies.

For more product feature you can refer : http://www.mailxaminer.com/product/

Thanks 

Sathish Veerapandian

MVP – Exchange Server