The reason I am back is that I realized that I did not mention anything about the Deleted Items folder. If you have a retention period set that will automatically delete messages from this folder after a period of time, you may wish to reduce that period to a minimum during your migration, thus you will have less to move. If there is no policy set, you can try to send out a memo that will be followed by all the users (yeah, right, what have I been smoking) to empty Deleted Items, or you can force it. There may be a problem with this scenario, though. I have seen users use deleted items just as any other folder–to store messages they may need at a later time. I’ll never know where they come up with this idea. It’s like, “OK, I have some fresh fruit here. I think I’ll store it in the kitchen trash until I eat it.” Yuck, what a concept. Anyway, empty or nearly empty Deleted Items folders can help speed a migration.

Some though should also be given to reducing the size of the Sent Items folder also.This can be a very large folder as well. Reducing the size of it can help speed the migration. I haven’t been able to find a good way to make this happen. You just need to cooperation of the users on this one.