How To: Migrate custom attributes from Notes? (4243938)

Please note that this document is a guide only and continues in much further detail. Despite this it is recommend you contact Quest Support for more information and guidelines. It is also recommended you have access to the tool MFCMapi.exe of a MAPI property viewer application.

Customer attributes can be migrated from Noted to Exchange MAPI properties.

In Notes you have many message attributes, such as From or Subject. You may also have custom attributes, for example, an attribute used by an archiving product that writes a customer attribute to each notes mail message.

Below there is an example of a scenario which a customer attribute is to be migrated and how it is migrated.

In this example we will call the custom attribute Custom01. In order to migrate this from Notes to an Exchange mailbox we need to add this mapping. Essentially we need to map the source attribute to a free property in the MAPI target mailbox that is not in use.

To do this you must create a unicode (not ANSI) file called customattrs.tsv (this can be done with notepad and the "Unicode" item can be selected from the "Encoding" options in the lower section next to the Save button) within the default installation directory C:\Program Files\Quest Software\Quest Notes Migrator for Exchange, or if it is the desktop migrator tool you are using, then the root directory for this containing the notesdtapp.exe. In the example file attached, we want to migrate the Custom01 attribute in Notes to Exchange mailboxes to a random (free) target property of 0x4801 STRING value type. When the migration is run, it automatically looks at the mappings within that file to determine the source and target attributes/properties. If during migration this does not work, below is a list of reason why and what can be done to troubleshoot this:

- Confirm that the targetproperty does not already exist and confirm that the target property specified in the attrs.tsv file is of the correct format. Please see further below for more information regarding this.

- Use Mfcmapi to troubleshootor view if the property has been created and also if the value has been created of the property.

- Confirm the tsv file is UNICODE and not ANSI

More detailed information on MAPI properties:

An unnamed propertys name is a 16-bit integer in the range 0x0001 to 0x7FFF. That 16-bit integer is valid in all mailboxes. Examples of unnamed properties are 0x0070 (a.k.a. PR_CONVERSATION_TOPIC) and 0x6656...both of which happen to be used by MAPI. So these two examples cannot be used as a target property value as they are already in use.

A named propertys name is a property set GUID and an ID that is either a 32-bit integer or a string. A 16-bit integer alias in the range 0x8000 to 0xFFFF is assigned to the named property by MAPI. That alias is mailbox-specific.

A custom property can be unnamed or named. If it is unnamed, you must select a 16-bit integer TargetProperty in the range 0x0001 to 0x7FFF that is not already in use by MAPI. If it is named, you can select any property set GUID. If you select a property set that is already in use, you must choose a 32-bit integer or string ID that is not already in use in that property set. If you select a brand new property set GUID, you do not have to worry about IDs already being in use because there will not be any.

If you want unnamed custom properties,you should try the 0x48xx, 0x58xx, or 0x78xx range. There are few, if any, properties already in use in those ranges.

If you want named custom properties, I would recommend using the PS_PUBLIC_STRINGS property set GUID, (PS_PUBLIC_STRINGS being an alias for {00020329-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}), and using string IDs with a prefix that is unique to your application (like Quest-).


The structure of commands we use is as follows:

ID unique identifier
SourceProperty Notes field name
TargetPropertySet Exchange named property set (if named):
<blank></blank>not a named property
PS_PUBLIC_STRING a standard GUID
PS_MAPI another standard GUID
nnnnnnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnnnnnnnnnn - arbitrary GUID
TargetProperty Exchange property ID or name (0xnnnn or
name)
TargetPropertyType Exchange property type (STRING, MV_STRING,
LONG, SYSTIME, or BOOLEAN)

i.e.

Sample customattrs.tsv for migrating the BirthDay field  from the personal address book is attached and shown below;

ID SourceProperty TargetPropertySet TargetProperty TargetPropertyType
Custom2 BirthDay PS_PUBLIC_STRINGS BDay SYSTIME

Please note that each field is separated with a tab.


Please note a known issue: This is whereby the mapping file does not work, and sometimes can be caused by the fact that after the last line there is no returned space i.e. the following error message will be logged:

“Custom attribute list file 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Dell\Migrator for Notes to Exchange\customattrs.tsv' has no 'ID' column.”

Add an extra line at the end of the last content line i.e. click on the Enter button, so that the very last line has the cursor under the ID column.