IMAP Import taking a very long time

[RSPOLCX]

In the webmail under Options > Advanced > Import, we can import mail from another IMAP server into the account on MailEnable. After putting in the settings for the other mail account, I get this message: An import is has been scheduled for processing. Click the Remove button if you wish to cancel this migration.

I've done this before on a different account on the same mail server, and it seemed to take several days but there was a lot of mail to be moved. On this one that I set up yesterday (over 24 hours now) there are only a few hundred messages in two folders. Is it supposed to take this long? I have about a 150 mail accounts to move from an old server and I'm wondering if there is any way to speed it up.

Also, when it says it "has been scheduled..." what is the schedule based on? This is not a very busy mail server that I'm trying to import the messages to.

[Admin]

When it says it has been scheduled, it means it has been placed in the migration queue. So depending on how many mailboxes are currently being migrated, it may have to wait. There is a maximum of 10 mailboxes being migrated at any time, which can be changed:

https://www.mailenable.com/kb/content/article.asp?ID=ME020739

The migration will go as fast as possible, it has not delays built into it, it just gets a list of messages in a folder, and downloads the contents. You can check the log for the mailbox in the directory:

Mail Enable\Config\Migrate

If you have an AV solution in a firewall or on the server it may be checking every email, which can slow it down.

[RSPOLCX]

It will be a one week tomorrow morning that I started this migration. There are only 1457 messages in two folders to be transferred. The mailbox they are being transferred from has nothing new being added to it. I know the migration is running because the files at \Mail Enable\Config\Migrate\ are changing date and size. So, I assume that eventually the folders and mail will transfer to the new mailbox on the MailEnable server.

Ok, so here's my problem. I have 150 other mailboxes to migrate to this server. At this rate it's going to take months, maybe longer to migrate these mailboxes. If multiple mailboxes are scheduled for migration at the same time do they run concurrently, or do they queue up and wait until one mailbox is done before the next one starts?

Probably a stupid question but MailEnable will transfer the folders in an IMAP migration, right? It's not going to just dump all the mail into the inbox, right?

Thanks for your help!

[rfwilliams777]

Well, here is what I did. Right or wrong, this is what I did and it worked very well (and took hours and not days).
Set up Outlook on a different windows user account on your computer. Set up a PST file to serve as the temporary archive. Then set up one IMAP account at a time (after each download). Once you see the IMAP account, drag the folders to your temporary archive account using sub folders to represent each user (do folder at a time so you don't get errors). Once you have all the accounts and their folders downloaded, remove the IMAP account/s, change the DNS to point to the new server (or you can use any domain on your new mail server with the only difference is the user name (email address) and their password. Then set up each account (one at a time) as IMAP for the new server. Drag your emails for each respective user's folders up to each account (removing the IMAP accounts so it will stop fetching). Depending on your bandwidth, processor, HDD speed (on your machine but mostly the server), and RAM, you should get those accounts pushed up. FYI, folders with special characters are no no, so you will have to manually create new folders. Be sure to not drag all folders up for each account, but only one folder at a time. Verify every so often with the webmail on the new server to make sure that your emails and folders are going up. You can also download the Contacts and Calendar I believe the same way. Once done with all this, delete the PST account in Outlook (to free up your space) or save it for a while as a backup for just in case. Kill the older server. And you should be good to go. I've transferred lots of accounts and tons of email using this method and it works every time, albeit mechanical and requires your involvement. But at least for sure you will have your stuff.

[RSPOLCX]

Thanks for posting how you got your mail to transfer. That's quite a work-around for something that looks like it should be pretty easy in MailEnable.

[RSPOLCX]

It will be two weeks tomorrow since I have set up the IMAP transfer and I'm still waiting f or the mail to transfer. Can this really be normal and expected behavior for a migration into MailEnable? How long will it take to migrate 150 mail boxes, if ever?

[rfwilliams777]

I will confess when I went from my old mail server that also had a failing drive that it did take a while (like a little over a week) to migrate everything over during business and non-business hours via ftp but that included about 275 gb worth of stored email.
But I still did the manual way and I did post office at a time to not create problems.