How to Fix Error “Too Many Transient Failure Retries Permanent Exception”?
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Written By Ravi Singh
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Approved By Shaun Hardneck
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Updated on 5 Jun, 2024 -
Min Reading 4 Min - Share
Summary: You may encounter the TooManyTransientFailureRetriesPermanentException error, while migrating mailboxes from on-premises Exchange Server to Office 365 in a hybrid setup. In this post, you’ll learn about this error in detail and the ways to fix it. You’ll also find about an EDB converter tool that can help in easily migrating mailboxes from Exchange Server to Office 365.
Exchange Server offers various types of setups to migrate to Office 365. One of the options is hybrid migration. As the name suggests, in hybrid system your Office 365 tenant and local on-premises Exchange Server can act as one. You can shift and lift your mailboxes from the local server to the cloud, with no interruption to the user. When all the mailboxes are transferred, you can easily do a cut-off. This is the smoothest way to migrate to Office 365 but also the longest one.
Selecting the hybrid system depends on the complexity or the size of your Exchange Server or mailboxes. With the hybrid system, you may encounter several issues, caused by various elements. These elements include bad configuration on your local server, hybrid configuration is missing something, fault on the network, or the internet performance.
While migrating mailboxes from a local Exchange 2010 Server to Exchange Online in Office 365 with a hybrid system, you might get the error – TooManyTransientFailureRetriesPermanentException.
Why does the Message “Too Many Transient Failure Retries Permanent Exception” Appear in Migration Batch?
This error usually occurs due to an issue with the mailbox which is being transferred at the time. It will not affect all mailboxes but a particular mailbox or mailboxes in your databases. So, the migration overuses its efforts to try to migrate the mailbox.
How to Fix the “Too Many Transient Failure Retries Permanent Exception” Error?
There are various things that could affect this off-boarding of the set mailbox. So, if other mailboxes have been migrated with no issues, this means there is an issue with a specific mailbox. It is always recommended not to go full blast and try to run the off-boarding of the mailboxes all at once as this will give you an indication of the issues that you might have.
You can start by resetting the search folders from Outlook application. If the search folders are corrupted, it could be an issue on the matter of migration. These can be cleared easily by opening Outlook with the account of the impacted user profile setup.
You need to open Outlook with a specific parameter.
- Right-click on the Start button.
- Click on Run.
- Type outlook.exe /cleanfinders.
- Press Enter.
After Outlook is loaded and all folders have been updated, close Outlook.
- Right-click on the Start button.
- Click on Run.
- Type outlook.exe /cleanviews.
- Press Enter.
Once Outlook is loaded and all folders have been updated, close Outlook. Then, try again to run the mailbox move. If the problem persists, you need to get the exact error where the move is failing. While connected to Exchange Online and logged into your tenant with the global admin, you can use PowerShell to get more information that could give an indication or perhaps the exact culprit behind the issue.
You can run the following command. This will give you a small report of the last two failures on the specified mailbox and more information on the matter.
$stats = Get-MoveRequestStatistics -identity [user@contoso.com](mailto:user@contoso.com) -IncludeReport$stats.Report.Failures | select -last 2After running this command, you can analyze the problem. If the problem persists, you can export the report for analysis to an XML file, which can be provided to Microsoft for support.
Get-MoveRequestStatistics -identity [user@contoso.com](mailto:user@contoso.com) -IncludeReport -DiagnosticInfo showtimeslots | Export-CliXml <XML File Name and Path>Although a Microsoft engineer can assist you on the matter, it could take some time as the problem could be with the mailbox which is stopping you from migrating your data. Here you need to consider that there might be an issue with your Exchange Server or network performance or configuration. So, you would need an ideal solution to offload your data without the complication of a hybrid setup. You also need to consider the fact that if you use public folders, it would be a bit complicated to migrate them from local to online.
It is suggested also to use the Test-MigrationServerAvailability which will test the availability of the target server before migrating from a local Exchange Server using an IMAP endpoint. The syntax of this command is as follows.
Test-MigrationServerAvailability -Imap -RemoteServer <Your IMAP server> -Port 993Test-MigrationServerAvailability -Imap -RemoteServer <Your IMAP server> -Port 143This will get your connectivity between the source and target via the IMAP ports 143, and the secure IMAP 993.
Another solution would be to use MFCMAPI to check and resolve problems found in folders. The MFCMAPI tool needs to be configured by clicking on Tools and Options. One needs to enable the Use the MDB_ONLINE flag when calling OpenMsgStore and click on OK.
The next step is to click on Session and Login in MFCMAPI to open the Outlook mail profile. From there you will need to right click on the results and click on Open Store. Here you will see Top of Information Store with all the structure. Once you find the problematic folder, one can simply delete the mentioned filed. For it to take effect, one must tick the Hard Deletion option. After the problematic folder/s have been removed, one can close the MFCMAPI, remove the Outlook Profile and then resume the migration batch and the migration should continue with no issues.
To Conclude
Alternatively, you can use an application that can seamlessly open any version of Exchange Server database – from 2003 to the latest version of 2019. Stellar Converter for EDB can offer this and more. You can browse through the whole database structure and open contacts, calendar, tasks and journals. You can granularly export mailboxes from multiple files to PST and other formats. The application can also be used to directly export to another mailbox database. This could come handy when you upgrade from Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange 2019 without having to hop to an Exchange Server 2013 or 2016. You can also use it as a migration tool to migrate from on-premises Exchange to Office 365 as you can directly export mailboxes and public folders to the tenant.
The error is typically matched with the transfer of specific mailboxes and it could be due to corruption in the mailbox or search folders, network issues, or other factors which could be affecting the migration process.
One can use the Get-MoveRequestStatistics to get a detailed report to point our which mailboxes have the issue and which folder could be causing the problem.
The error is thrown against the migration batch, but only the specified mailboxes will be affected. The error will let you know that one or more resources in the batch has encountered an issue. Having migration batches with not a large amount of mailboxes, will help to minimize the load and will have a clear indication which is the problematic mailbox.
The error is typically matched with the transfer of specific mailboxes and it could be due to corruption in the mailbox or search folders, network issues, or other factors which could be affecting the migration process.
The PowerShell command Get-MoveRequestStatistics will give you a detailed XML file report of the move request which can guide you in finding the culprit mailbox, or folder while also helping Microsoft for support to further analyze the case if their support is requested.
There are various things one can do to prevent any issues which are also mentioned in this article. Good preparation work is crucial apart from having the Exchange Servers backed up and tested on a routine basis. The mailboxes to be scanned on a monthly or periodically.
Yes, if the problem persists, there are other ways to migrate your data to the cloud or a newer Exchange Server. With specialized applications such as Stellar Convertor for EDB can minimize the technical and financial impact of the migration.
One needs to factor in the pre-migration tasks like cleanup, minimizing the mailbox sizes, preparing the network and bandwidth, as well as preparing the clients’ applications. Testing and availability tests should be tested on the local server apart from the connectivity to the cloud.
Migration batch status can be monitoring using the PowerShell command Get-MigrationUser or via theExchange Admin Center
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NO About The Author
Ravi Singh is a Senior Writer at Stellar®. He is an expert Tech Explainer, IoT enthusiast, and a passionate nerd with over 7 years of experience in technical writing. He writes about Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365, Email Migration, Linux, Windows, Mac, DIY Tech, and Smart Home. Ravi spends most of his weekends working with IoT (DIY Smart Home) devices and playing Overwatch. He is also a solo traveler who loves hiking and exploring new trails.
