Export Contacts PST: Backing Up with PowerShell

Exchange: Export Contacts to a PST Using PowerShell

Exporting a user’s contacts out of Exchange into a standalone PST file is useful when someone’s leaving, when you need an offline backup of their contacts, or when migrating data between environments. The command:

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox User1 -IncludeFolders "#Contacts#" -FilePath "\\Server\Share\User1-Contacts.pst"

Run this from the Exchange Management Shell, replacing User1 with the mailbox alias you’re exporting and the file path with a UNC path the Exchange server’s Mailbox Replication service account has write access to (a local path on the Exchange server itself won’t work — it needs to be a network share). Check on the export’s progress with:

Get-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox User1 | Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics

Note this requires the Mailbox Import Export role, which isn’t assigned to Organization Management by default — if the command fails with a permissions error, assign yourself the role first with New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role "Mailbox Import Export" -User (your account), then close and reopen the Exchange Management Shell before retrying.

On-Prem Only — Here’s the Exchange Online Path (Updated for 2026)

The command above still works unchanged on current on-premises Exchange, including Exchange Server Subscription Edition (the current on-prem release), but it’s worth being explicit that this cmdlet does not exist in Exchange Online at all — Microsoft’s own documentation states it plainly: “This cmdlet is available only in on-premises Exchange.” If you’re trying to export a mailbox or a specific folder like Contacts from Exchange Online rather than on-prem, there’s no direct equivalent single command. Microsoft’s current recommended path at admin scale is a Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Content Search export (via the Purview compliance portal), which supersedes the older “In-Place eDiscovery” workflow in the Exchange admin centre. For a one-off single mailbox, having the user do a manual export from within Outlook itself remains the simplest option, though it isn’t the recommended method for bulk or unattended exports.

Resources

• Exchange