Product Review: Transend Migrator

In the past, I've had to migrate less-common email clients, such as Pegasus Mail and Eudora, to Microsoft Outlook. Outlook's import/exportfunctionality proved less than reliable, with random freezing and unhelpful error messages. Outlook IMAP support also left much to be desired, oftenhanging and always slow, making it an awkward migration solution.

Transend Migrator is designed to move mail from legacy mail clients and servers tomore commonly used systems reliably and with verbose logging so that it's easy to troubleshoot any problems that might crop up along the way. AlthoughMigrator's primary intended use is to move mail from legacy systems, there's no reason why you can't migrate to a legacy client orserver if needed.

On starting the application, you're presented with a simple interface for single-user migrations, which Figure 1 shows. Although the interface isdivided into E-Mail, Address Book, Calendar, and Task/To Do categories, all the necessary information entered for Email can be automatically copied sothat a migration task can be launched without entering the same username, password, and path information in the other categories.

 
Figure 1: Migrating a single user in Transend Migrator

During my testing, I used a combination of connection types, including IMAP4, MAPI, and PST with Outlook, Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Pegasus Mail, andExchange Server. Migrator proved to be very reliable in maintaining the integrity of the data in the target and in providing verbose logging.

Exchange/Outlook Systems

Migrator supports Exchange Server 2003 and later (32-bit) and Outlook 2003 and later (32-bit). The first thing that strikes you about the options formigrating Exchange/Outlook-based email is that Migrator uses MAPI to pull and push data through Outlook or personal folder store (PST) files(non-MAPI). You can't make a direct connection to an Exchange server using remote procedure call (RPC); you can use only IMAP4. There's an option towork with offline folder store (OST) files as the data source if Outlook is configured in Exchange Cached mode. However, as Transend notes, OST filesare not a reliable source for data migration.

There are a few prerequisites before you can migrate to or from Exchange/Outlook. The computer on which Migrator is installed must belong to the samedomain as the Exchange server. The user performing the migration needs to have Receive-As permission on the mailbox database where the target emailaccounts are located. Outlook must also be installed on the same computer as Migrator and be the default mail client.

The documentation for preparing an Exchange server for migration was disappointing. Working through the documentation was confusing, as I wasn't alwaysable to determine what scenario the technical instructions were intended to match. It would be better if the Help files and white papers were organizedby migration scenario. I was also disappointed to find that instructions for working with Office 365 weren't available yet for Migrator 10.5. However,Migrator 10.5's support for Exchange Web Services means that migrations to Office 365 will be faster and more reliable than the IMAP-based migrationsused in Migrator 9.x.

Other Messaging Systems

Where Migrator comes into its own is support for a wide range of different messaging systems. In the list of source systems, you'll find email clientssuch as Eudora, Pegasus Mail, and Thunderbird. Web mail is also supported, and I was able to connect to my Gmail account with no problems. Although notlisted as an option in the drop-down menus, it's possible to connect to Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) via IMAP.

Advanced Features

Migrator offers many advanced features. You can choose to exclude certain folders from the source and migrate folders to an alternate destination onthe target. You can do address translation, which is especially useful for converting x.500 addresses to standard SMTP. You can migrate mail to an HTMLor PDF format, which would be handy for creating searchable archives. Migrator also includes a separate application, Message Vault, specifically forarchiving mail.

But the most powerful feature of Migrator is the batch mode for moving multiple mailboxes simultaneously. Batch mode works by adding data to a table ofgeneric predefined variable names ($Var1, $Var2, and so on). Data can be entered manually or loaded from a spreadsheet. Once the migration table iscreated, the variable names can be inserted as needed on the migration setup screen for a single user. Batch migrations can be scheduled using the GUIor the command-line interface.

An Email Migration Swiss Army Knife

Migrator provides support for most email systems you're likely to come across; if not, it's flexible enough that Transend's support staff can helpprovide a tailored solution. Unlike Outlook's import/export features, Migrator is reliable, and its comprehensive logs help you easily track down anyissues. If you need to migrate mail from or to legacy mail servers, or if you need filter or modify Exchange mailbox content, Migrator is a goodsolution.