XADM: Exmerge Does Not Find Messages Based on Specified Criteria

The Exchange Server Mailbox Merge program (Exmerge.exe) can export items from the source information store, based on certain message selection criteria that you can configure. For example, you can configure the Exmerge program to export only messages between a certain date range.

When you configure a message selection criteria, the Exmerge program may not find any items, even though there are items in the mailboxes that are selected that match the criteria.

This issue can occur if different selection criteria are specified, for example, if you specify a list of subject lines and attachment names.

In this case, the Exmerge program exports only those items that contain both a subject line that is included in the list of specified subject lines and at least one of the attachments that are included in the list of attachment names.

To resolve this issue, perform one of the following steps:

• Update the selection criteria. Add additional attachment names or subject lines to the specified lists. -or-
  
  
• If you want to export items based on subject line or attachment name, run two separate instances of the Exmerge program. In one instance only specify the subject lines, and in the other instance only specify the attachment names.

This behavior is by design.

The Exmerge program uses the following algorithm to search for messages in the source store where date_restriction is the range of dates that are specified on the Dates page, subj is one or more subject lines that you specified, and att is one or more attachment names that you specified.

If a range of dates or subjects or attachments is not specified, then that component is removed from the above algorithm. For example, if no date restriction is specified then the algorithm is: If no attachment names are specified, the algorithm is: