I had an Exchange 5.5 Server which was configured and setup by my predecessors. This machine will be disbanded soon, and all mailboxes should be moved to an exchange 2003 machine. Because of several reasons, i did not want to use ADC to connect those two machines together.
An additional problem was that the Exchange 5.5 Server was a German version, while the Exchange 2003 Server is an English version.
At first, i tried the mail migration wizard. It worked okay, but all Folders where duplicated in English and German, e.G. i got an 'Kalender' Folder, containing the ``real'' calender, and i got an 'Calendar' Folder, which was empty. I didn't find any options on how to configure this behaviour, so i just scrapped the mail migration wizard as an option.
Next thing to try was ExMerge, which refused to connect to my Exchange 5.5 ( problem description). There weren't any KB entries which helped me to solve my problem. While researching alternative solutions for my problem, i found a pretty old version of ExMerge, for Exchange 5.5.
I've used the this exmerge.ini, which was able to successfully export all mail from the exchange 5.5 server. Have a close look at the ini file, it converts all default folder names to english.
Please note that you need to execute this under an account which has full rights (in the german version of exchange 5.5, this is called 'Administrator des Dienstkontos').
You can get this old Version of ExMerge here.
I've used the default ini file, which was supplied with ExMerge 6.5. But beforehand, i enabled Swiss German as a Language using ESM.
Second problem are rights agan. Use ADU&C to create a new user and group. Add the user to the group, and give the group full rights on the mail storage where you want to import the mail. Then, use runas /user to run exmerge using that user.
Select your locale when importing the .PST's into your new Exchange server, exmerge prompts for this if you didn't configure it in the .ini file (which isn't the case in the default ini file).
This methods works, more or less. It breaks server based rules, because the folders are renamed to english on export, and renamed to german on import. You can't use this method to import/export public folders, you will need to use outlook to do this (Export at .pst, and Import it again).