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Due to some major balls up, I have lost IMAP accounts during a domain transfer. Users still have 'cached' copies in their mail clients (Outlook 2007/2010/express). I know that if I recreate the mailboxes on the new server, they'll lose the emails they have locally, as soon as the client syncs with the server.

Is there a/what is the best way, to a) Sync the other way so that mail on the client is added to the server (if I recreate their account) or b) backup the mail locally (you cant even copy the mail from folder to personal folder when the the server is offline).

Note - I will need to recreate the same email addresses for each user, so simply keeping the stored mails and working offline will not do.

Thanks in advance.

Faldinio
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  • Ideally, you would just be restoring a backup of their e-mail at this point. I take it that's not an option? – Brent Pabst Oct 11 '12 at 16:08
  • There are no server backups of the email accounts available. Domain hosted with a 3rd party and they said they do not back up email... they have logged a ticket to their 'engineers' although that was 6 hours ago and nothing heard yet. – Faldinio Oct 11 '12 at 16:26
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    And THIS is why you make sure you have backups and/or make sure that backups are required as a part of your contract with an outsourcing vendor. – Magellan Oct 12 '12 at 16:50

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You shouldn't lose the message with IMAP but to play safe have the users move the messages, folders and all into their local mailbox. Then recreate the mailboxes and after establishing an initial connection the messages can get dragged back into their accounts.

John Gardeniers
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