Migrating Exchange mail to externally hosted company?

[WetBehindEars]

I have a client that just switched from hosting their mail internally on
Exchange 2003 with Outlook 2003 to an externally hosted Exchange 2007 RCP
over HTTP with Outlook 2007 as their client. What is the best method to move
their existing mail to the new hosting account? Do I just copy the .pst and
open it in their Outook 2007? Do I need to send the .pst files to the
hosting company so they can import on their side or can I copy them into
their new exchange account via Outlook 2007? Or should these old .pst reside
locally and they access them as a second box within Outlook? What if they
want the same folder structure that was in their previous Outlook?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Those are all good possibilities. The one you choose depends on the current
state of the migration, the resources available to you, the hosting company,
your users and in what way you want to manage your email.

 

[WetBehindEars]

Well I would like for the old pst to fall into the default folder of the
Outlook 2007. I would prefer that it does not come in as a seperate mailbox,
so what would be the best path to get this done? Just a copy and point?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

In that case the data has to be transferred from the pst-file to the
Exchange mailbox. Whether or not your ISP can do that, your users, you or
somebody else is something I cannot decide for you. Again; that depends on
your resources and offered possibilities.

For the manual process;
File-> Open-> Outlook Data File...
Then it's just a matter of drag and drop.