[arzee303]

I work for a large company and support Blackberry devices. We have a vendor that manages our BES along with our Exchange environment. One particular user likes to delete meagges from his Outlook and leave them on the BB. This has been happening since 2004 so there are currenty about 1500 messages that have been accruing over the years. We backup the device almost daily to a PC since these messages reside no where else. This user experiences constant issues with the BB and frequently, we have to wipe the device, remove him from the BES, restore the backup (messages and attachment info only) and then reactivate on the BES.

It has been my contention since I've been supporting this person that this is not a reliable way of using the device; the risk of data loss is too great and restoring a backup that is 5 years old, originating from a much earlier version of RIM software, can present issues. My suggestion to fix the issue is to transfer the current contents of the backup to one particular folder that we can setup to sync with the BB via Folder Redirection. This way if there is ever a need to wipe and restore, the years of saved messages are secure on the Exchange server.

My questions are: Does my suggestion sound plausible? Is there any validity to my contention that this old backup could be causing issues, even if I am only selectively restoring messages and attachment data? Does anyone know of a better way to handle this type of user?

Thanks in advance for any practical suggestions.

I think you're faced with an impossible situation.
There's no way to move the messages from the device back to Outlook.
Folder Redirection simply doesn't work that way.

Your user is certainly using the device in a non-standard way. Make them clear that they are "on their own" and any data loss is not your responsibility.
The constant backup/restore procedure is bound to fail at some point, and you won't have any way to recover from that.

[arzee303]

Yes, folder redirection will only serve my needs once the messages are contained in a folder in his mailbox, correct? I could then set that folder to sync with the BB, right? My (imperfect) suggestion for that was to simply forward all the messages from the BB back to the same user's account with some rule that puts all those messages into a particular folder. Then I would have all the messages in one folder in his mailbox. I know the 'From' field will then be replaced with the user's name rather than the person it actually came from, but for lack of a better idea...Any suggestions, ideas or constructive criticisms are welcome!