Mass Editing of Outlook Rules File .RWZ

[Steve]

We have recently implemented a Email Archive solution which imports all PSTs
company wide. However, a problem we have encountered is that any rules are
broken which refer to the PSTs.

We need to be able to manipulate/edit the rules in a simple Find/Replace
situation whereby any references to the PST file are changes to refer to the
newly imported Outlook folder.

Does anyone have a tool to do this, or any suggestions? I have 30,000 users
(and have found 9,000+ PST files, so it can't be done manually.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Not possible.
With those changes applied and from the information provided I really don't
understand why you would want a 1-to-1 conversion for this to begin with.
The whole purpose of implementing a company wide archiving solution is that
users don't have to bother with using rules and separate folders anymore for
archiving purposes. Why implement a centralized solution while it still
require decentralized modifications and has decentralized dependencies?

 

[Steve]

The reasons are;

People may have a PST file for personal data, they may have several rules in
place, when mail come from "(e-mail address removed)" move to "Family" folder in
personal.PST, as the PST is now imported to a folder called "(PST) Personal"
we need to amend the rule so that it still goes in to the subfolder "Family"
under the newly created folder "(PST) Personal".

Does that make sense?

Just because we are eliminating PST folders, doens't mean the rules
shouldn't be kept to keep emails organised.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

No, actually this doesn't make sense at all. Why would you want to archive
personal emails within your corporate messaging environment?

Which environment are you coming from anyway? From the information I had to
make the assumption that that you were previously in an Exchange environment
and relied on client side archiving to a pst-file with the help of rules and
are now still in that very same Exchange environment and have implemented a
server-side archiving solution.

Just because we are eliminating PST folders, doens't mean the rules
shouldn't be kept to keep emails organised.

True, but organizing mail is something completely different than archiving
mail. Your example is about organizing/sorting current mail. Your question
was regarding archiving mail.

 

[Steve]

OK, bad examples. I used the personal/family as an example, lets call the
PST Microsoft.pst and the folder "Takeover Bid Information"

We are in a very large Exchange environment, but the users have always
previously had the ability to create PST folders, and many of them do,
usually to archive stuff off they do not want to lose, but could be one of
many reasons, not necessarily archival reasons.

We are eliminating the ability to use PST files for compliance reasons.

The rules need to be kept. Instead of going to folder1 in microsoft.PST, go
to Folder1 in the new inbox folder called "(Imported) Microsoft.pst", as
re-setting these up would use a huge amount of man power for Desktop Services
to complete.


Steve

 

[Roady [MVP]]

I understand, but my original answer still stands; there is no way to
automate this.

From what I understand from you there were certain users who directly sorted
their mail via rules to a pst-file you consider as an archive instead of
sorting it into their current mailboxes. That is what created the issue. If
they sorted within their mailbox with rules and archived to a pst-file via
the archive feature you could simply disable the archive feature (as you now
have server-side archiving) and be done with it. It is the mix of using
rules for both sorting and archiving that created this mess.

I assume that the imported pst-file isn't just to be left there in the
mailbox for eternity? This has to be integrated with the mailbox, project
folders or corporate knowledge base, right? Otherwise your users would still
be archiving manually within their own mailbox which is what you don't want
anymore. Or has this pst-file been merged with the entire mailbox instead of
put in a separate folder?

The solution is that they reevaluate their current sorting methods to the
changed environment. This will probably mean that they can drop a lot of
rules instead of translating them 1-on-1. They can now take much more
advantage of other sorting methods such as Search Folders and custom views
since everything is now within a single mailbox container instead of mailbox
and additional pst-file containers. Rules will now also be server-side
instead of client side which is another modification needed to the rules.
Yes, it will take some time now, but ultimately it will increase their
productivity which is the main reason why you implement IT systems.