XADM: How to Search the Exchange Store for a Keyword or Subject

This article describes how to safely search for a keyword or subject on the Exchange Store (drive M) of your Exchange 2000 Server.

You can use the FINDSTR command to find a keyword or subject on the Exchange Store (drive M) of your Exchange 2000 Server. However, this forces a conversion of every single message in the store to MIME, and the .stm files become very large. To avoid this, Microsoft recommends that you perform the search on a non-production server to which the Exchange store has been restored from backup. To search the whole MBX tree, you must be a member of the Administrators group. To search for a keyword or subject on the Exchange store by using the FINDSTR command:

1.	Restore the Exchange Store database from a backup to a non-production server.
2.	Open a command prompt.
3.	Type findstr /ism term *.eml, where term is the keyword or subject you want to look for, and then press ENTER.