PST Imports - Security & Compliance - Or Outlook Imports

[Craig Irvin]

I have opened multiple tickets on this already as we are experiencing issues across multiple tenants. On 1/26 we performed a migration for two of our customers; switching them from our Exchange Server to Exchange Online. The process we used because we have over 2000 mailboxes was IMAP coupled with PST exports of calendars,contacts,notes, etc. It went perfectly; specifically the PST imports done through Security & Compliance.

On 2/9 we performed the same process for 4 more tenants and the PST Imports are stating its skipping items because they are "corrupted." Thinking it may have been a bad export from our Exchange 2013 server (using new-mailboxexportrequest) we redid the exports and those failed as well. Going back the previous two tenants we migrated on 1/26 we reused a PST file which was known to successfully import and spun up a temporary mailbox and tried the import again - it now states it is skipping items because they are "corrupted"

Going further we took several PST files and made sure they could be opened with Outlook and that we could see the items that are missing from the user's calendar. We then tried to do an Outlook PST import as well as a simple copy/paste and though the items show up on the user's calendar they disappear after about 15 minutes.

I have opened three tickets on this issue to hopefully get some traction. Two of the tickets I've received call backs. In both of those tickets (all listed below) I have explained the scale of the issue and emphasized the priority I am met with no response and on ticket 7380395 I was told "I get off in 7 minutes" to my explanation of how critical this is to get the issue identified so that we can notify our customers. For the Microsoft Quality control people reading this; listen to the audio because the call was "recorded for training purposes."

To the community could anyone that has recently performed PST Imports try another import using the same PST file to see if you get "Skiped / Corrupted items"? Screen shot of what I'm seeing is attached.

Ticket #7380395

Ticket #7384518

Ticket #7385307

Ticket #7379365

Ticket #7385632

[#2]

Craig, other have been seeing numerous issues with "corrupt" items when doing regular mailbox moves to O365 in the past few days. It might be a coincidence, but I have a suspicion the two issues are related. I'll try to ping few folks (and also relay your experience with support).

[#3]

Thank you Vasil. I'm now up to 5 open tickets but it doesn't seem there is any urgency around the issue so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[#4]

This probably won't make you feel any better, but I have been getting some excellent support from the SharePoint Online team for 3 tickets in the past 3 weeks. 

[#5]

I typically get great support. However what I'm finding if it's anything past the easy stuff no one seem to give urgency to the problem and you're constantly asked to perform mundane troubleshooting tasks multiple times and barely any wiliness to admit to an issue.. just buy time until it goes away. I really wish there was a pay for option because believe me; I would pay for it.

To the mater at hand though. I just reran another import using the same PST file (which has failed three times now) and it's successful. I ran another import that previously failed and it still failing.

[#6]

From: Office 365 Ambassadors

From reading the log file provided it seems that even though the file was not corrupt when you did your original import, it now has become corrupt.

I have also now been advised by senior management that we cannot continue troubleshooting this particular case due to three other open tickets being on the system and this being a duplicate. The reason for this is, that when running fixes from different locations on the same tenant it can cause more problems internally for yourself.


The last piece of advice I can give is to create a new pst file from the successfully imported mailbox that you have from 1/26.

I would also close all but one of the still open tickets and do what you did on this one and click the "i'm available" button and reference this case as the other agents don't seem to have done much on their end, but their tickets are the original and this I am afraid is Microsoft policy and cannot be broken.

[#7]

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@Craig Irvin wrote:
From: Office 365 Ambassadors

From reading the log file provided it seems that even though the file was not corrupt when you did your original import, it now has become corrupt.

I have also now been advised by senior management that we cannot continue troubleshooting this particular case due to three other open tickets being on the system and this being a duplicate. The reason for this is, that when running fixes from different locations on the same tenant it can cause more problems internally for yourself.


The last piece of advice I can give is to create a new pst file from the successfully imported mailbox that you have from 1/26.

I would also close all but one of the still open tickets and do what you did on this one and click the "i'm available" button and reference this case as the other agents don't seem to have done much on their end, but their tickets are the original and this I am afraid is Microsoft policy and cannot be broken.

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The tickets though they are duplicate in nature the problem exists in all tenants; why should any be closed? Just because it's a single person opening the tickets in all of the environments doesn't mean the issue isn't legitimately being experienced in all of the environments. So what is being said is we don't care about 3 of the 4 tenants experiencing this problem? How exactly is the scale of the issue able to be defined when you can't open legitimate tickets in the environments where the problem is being experienced?

Anyone at Microsoft support please look up one of the tickets and give me a call. I would love to discuss this policy and why Microsoft has now basically taken a stance on not providing support on clearly an issue with the service on 3 of the 4 customers that are experiencing this issue.

FYI in terms of the "scanpst" I've already provided information that we

1. Generated new PST's

2. Was able to open and import previous and new PST's into a mailbox that is on our local Exchange server.

3. Shown that the same exact PST file was successful orginally, failed, failed and now succeeded. So if the PST file was corrupt then why is this happening?

[#8 · Accepted solution]

Having worked as support engineer, I know they have some policies around the number of tickets and they are always pressed to close them as soon as possible. And most of the time you end up with someone working for an outsourcing company, not a direct Microsoft employee, unless you pay from Premier. But that's the reality of it.

I've relayed your troubles to some of the Exchange folks, hope something will come out of it.

[#9]

I reran the imports again using the same PST files and now I'm getting some successes. I went a little further and now I'm mapping out which server the user's mailbox is on. My bet is that there is some type of rolling fix being done behind the scenes without any acknowledgment of the issue. I will continue to retry failures and record which server they are on.

Name	ServerName	Status
julie	bl0pr07mb4034	Success
tamera	cy4pr07mb3013	Failure
john	cy4pr07mb3077	Success
beverly	cy4pr07mb3528	Success
michael	cy4pr07mb3847	Success
heather	dm2pr07mb671	Failure
sml.confrm	dm5pr07mb3081	Success
judy	dm5pr07mb3957	Success
teresa	mwhpr0701mb3772	Failure
shirley	mwhpr0701mb3835	Success
larry	sn1pr07mb3967	Success
boardroom	sn1pr07mb4045	Success

[#10]

After many phone calls and persistence plus the help of Vasil I've finally received acknowledgement of the issue and Microsoft is working the issue  / patching the servers.

Exchange Online Advisory EX129170.

User Impact: Admins may be unable to migrate calendar items, and if migration is successful, the calendar may be missing items.

[#11]

Thanks for the credit, but I barely did anything on this, just connected the dots. Many other MVPs have been complaining for a while now on that other issue I mentioned above, and putting some pressure on the MS folks. It seems the issues were indeed related, but hopefully it's all in the past now.