The ExMerge tool may not retrieve messages when you use the ExMerge tool to copy soft-deleted messages from the Exchange store to a .pst file in Exchange 2003

When you use the Mailbox Merge Wizard (ExMerge) tool in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to copy soft-deleted messages from the Exchange store to a .pst file, the ExMerge tool may not retrieve messages. The following MAPI_W_PARTIAL_COMPLETION error message is logged in the ExMerge.log file:

This problem occurs because the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service always scans a message before the message leaves the Exchange store if a virus scanner is installed. If the message was soft deleted, the Exchange Information Store service cannot write the soft-deleted message to the message stream. Therefore, when the virus scanner tries to scan the soft-deleted message, the virus scanner tries unsuccessfully to write to the message stream.

Important These steps may increase your security risk. These steps may also make your computer or your network more vulnerable to attack by malicious users or by malicious software such as viruses. We recommend the process that this article describes to enable programs to operate as they are designed to, or to implement specific program capabilities. Before you make these changes, we recommend that you evaluate the risks that are associated with implementing this process in your particular environment. If you choose to implement this process, take any appropriate additional steps to help protect your system. We recommend that you use this process only if you really require this process.

To work around this problem, temporarily stop the virus scanner on the Exchange server when you run the ExMerge tool.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.