Microsoft’s Outlook.com service recently made a significant change that caused some users to lose their primary mailbox, but the company is working on an emergency fix for them. The problem arose because Microsoft was pushing all mailboxes from Hotmail and Live into Exchange Online, with no settings to move only your primary mailbox over first. This meant many people who relied on those services lost access to their email or had issues outside of the office if they were traveling at the time this happened.,
The “new-moverequest” command is a move request that will only work if the mailbox is already on Exchange Online. If it’s not, the command will fail.
A main mailbox and an archive mailbox are available to the user. Only the primary mailbox should be moved to Exchange Online; the archive mailbox should remain on-premises. When you generate the move, however, you get an error message that says “Cannot perform this move.” As a consequence, the main mailbox will be located in the datacenter, while the archive mailbox will be located outside of the datacenter (on premise). This isn’t a recommended setting. Is there a reason for this, and is there a way to fix it?
Table of Contents
Examine the locations of your main and archive mailboxes.
Follow these procedures to get the main mailbox location:
- Log in to the Exchange admin center on-premises.
- Click on Recipients > mailboxes
- Choose a user.
Hannah Duncan’s mailbox is an example of a user mailbox that is hosted on-premises.
Follow these procedures to determine the location of the archive mailbox:
- Select the user.
- In the right pane, click View details under In-Place Archive.
Because it says Local archive generated, the archive mailbox is on-premises.
Only move your main mailbox to Exchange Online.
Keep the main mailbox on-premises while moving the archive mailbox to Exchange Online. Let’s perform the command from the article Move mailbox to Exchange Online using PowerShell in Exchange Online PowerShell.
PS C:> New-MoveRequest -Identity “Hannah.Duncan@exoip.com” -Remote -RemoteHostName “mail.exoip.com” -PrimaryOnly -TargetDeliveryDomain “exoip365.mail.onmicrosoft.com” -RemoteCredential (Get-Credential exoipadministrator)
This action is not possible to carry out.
The PowerShell console output looks like this.
This action is not possible to carry out.. It will result in the primary mailbox being in datacenter and the archive mailbox being outside the datacenter (on premise). This is not a supported configuration. + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [New-MoveRequest], CannotHavePrima…manentException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=PAXP190MB1743,RequestId=1eb593bd-f0cd-4801-b96d-646798a6701a,TimeStamp=6/5/2022 11:15:06 AM] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-CannotHavePrimaryInDatacenterAndArchiveOnPremisePermanentException] A0C7A0F1, Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Migration.MailboxReplication.MoveRequest.NewModernMoveRequest + PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com
This action is not possible to carry out.. It will result in the primary mailbox being in datacenter and the archive mailbox being outside the datacenter (on premise). This is not a supported configuration.
What is causing this error?
Configuration of mailboxes was provided by Exchange Hybrid.
It is not feasible to have both the main and archive mailboxes in Exchange Online. This is something that Microsoft does not agree with.
The settings listed below are feasible and supported:
- On-premises main and archive mailboxes
- Exchange Online supports both main and archive mailboxes.
- Exchange Online has two mailboxes: a primary on-premises mailbox and an archive mailbox.
Conclusion
You learned why moving the primary mailbox only to Exchange Online and keeping the archive mailbox on-premises fails. The error appears: This action is not possible to carry out.. It will result in the primary mailbox being in datacenter and the archive mailbox being outside the datacenter (on premise). This is not a supported configuration. That’s because it’s not possible to move the primary mailbox while keeping the archive mailbox on-premises.
Did you find this article to be interesting? You may also be interested in Troubleshooting and Fixing Mailbox Move Failure. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter and share this content.
The “target user already has a primary mailbox” is an error that occurs when attempting to move the primary mailbox to Exchange Online. This can be fixed by removing the old primary mailbox and creating a new one.
Related Tags
- move exchange online mailbox to another database
- migrate mailbox from exchange online to on premise powershell
- source user doesn’t have a primary mailbox
- mailbox is not currently being moved
- exchange hybrid migrate shared mailbox
