Office 365 Backup Solution - Export Online Archive Mailbox to PST File

Are you an Office 365 user? Then you should seriously consider having backup of your Office 365 data. The reason behind this backup is simple. Our data is not 100% safe anywhere. It can suffer from malicious attacks and accidental deletion. So, Office 365 backup solution will always place you on a safe side.

Surprisingly, there is not much initiative on behalf of Microsoft to export Office 365 archive mailbox data. Their Office 365 data backup policy is a weak and ever-changing one. They support email backup for only 30 days, which is insufficient by all means. So, users are on their own when it comes to Office 365 archive mailbox. In this blog, we will provide users top 3 best Office 365 mailbox backup solutions. The aim is to enable users to secure their cloud data by backup process.

Office 365 Backup Solutions to Export Office 365 Archive Mailbox to PST

Here, users will know four different methods of saving Office 365 data. All the methods can be performed by the admin of Office 365 while individual users can backup their data by implementing the last method only. We will describe all the methods stepwise in this write-up so that users can easily perform them.

Solution 1: Approach using Efficient Tool

The best and perfect approach for O365 backup is Office 365 Export tool. We will describe instructions for both the admin and the users so that both can get benefited.

For Admin Account

Admin account holders should follow these steps to backup Office 365 mailbox to PST.

1. Open Office 365 Export tool on the machine and click Login.

2. On the next page, tick the checkbox named “Is Admin” situated just above Sign In button.

3. Type Office 365 username and password in the designated boxes and click on Sign In.

4. You will see a list of Office 365 user ID on the screen. Select all the mailboxes you want to take backup of from that list. Click on Next.

5. Choose email format from the given options of PST, MSG, and EML. We have chosen Microsoft Outlook (PST) option.

6. Once PST option has been chosen, splitting PST file option will also be available. You can try this option to prevent PST file corruption due to oversized PST.

7. Choose the mailboxes you wish to backup from your Office 365 account.

8. “Date Filter” option is also there in the software. Users can use this option to filter during migration.

The above steps are to export Office 365 primary Mailbox to PST format. To export Office 365 archive Mailbox to PST file only, check Archive Mailbox option. If you want to complete data of Office 365, then check above items like Mails, Calendar,Tasks and Contacts.

9. Check "Archive Mailbox" option to export Office 365 online archive mailbox to PST.
Note: User account must be enabled for In-place Archive Mailbox.

10. Click on Browse to select the destination folder of Office 365 mailbox backup. Select the folder for the resultant PST file and click OK.

11. Now, click Start to initiate the backup process of Office 365 mailboxes.

12. Once the process begins, users can see the real-time progress status of the procedure on screen. They can also pause the process if necessary by clicking on Pause button.
13. After O365 backup is done, the status will be shown as Completed.

14. If you want to save the backup process report, Click Save Report and select the saving location.
15. Finally, you can find the backup of selected Office 365 data on the chosen folder of local system.

For User Account

Follow these steps to perform the backup of Office 365 mailbox from an user account.

1. Launch Office 365 Export application on your system and click on Login.
2. Enter Office 365 credentials like username and password and click Sign In.
3. All Office 365 folders and sub-folders will be displayed in front of you. Click Next.
4. Follow steps no. 5 to 14 of the earlier procedure of “For Admin Account.” Thus you will be able to export Office 365 mailboxes to PST smoothly for user account.

Solution 2: Free Approach using eDiscovery PST Export Tool

In this free solution, we will use Office 365 eDiscovery PST export tool to backup Office 365 mailbox to PST file. This tool is a useful one for O365 admins to export Office 365 mailboxes to PST. Before using the tool, users have to follow certain steps. The steps are mentioned here:

1. Assign all compliance and security related permissions for eDiscovery tool.
2. In the ‘Search and Investigation’ section of eDiscovery, create a case.
3. Add some new users if eDiscovery is created recently.
4. Put legal hold on the existing content to protect them from any type of alternation.
5. Now, generate and execute some content searches with the case.

Solution 3: Free or Manual Approach using PowerShell Command

This manual method involves execution of MS Windows PowerShell commands. If you want to export O365 mailbox to PST via PowerShell, follow these steps:

1. First of all, connect your Office 365 account with MS Exchange Server.
2. Grant permissions for accessing export rights to perform O365 backup.
3. Now, you have to configure Office 365 account in MS Outlook email client.
4. Once configuration is done, verify the settings done in Microsoft Outlook.
5. From currently open email client, transfer Personal Storage Table(PST) file.
6. Make sure if the Office 365 mailboxes export to PST has been completed.
7. Terminate all the permissions you granted during the step 2 of the procedure.
8. Discontinue the connection initiates at the beginning of this export process.

Conclusion

This post has successfully described four different Office 365 mailbox backup solutions. Users can choose to perform any of the above solutions to archive Office 365 mailbox to PST, EML and MSG format. Before performing, they must consider the pros and cons of each solution and then decide which one they wish to adopt.

Recover Permanently Deleted Emails From Outlook – Ultimate Solution

Outlook is one of the most commonly used email client software which enables the user to send and receive messages on their systems. While using Outlook the most common situation faced by users is deleting important emails from MS Outlook while cleaning mailbox. Sometimes, the user accidentally performs Shift+Delete on important emails while managing mailbox. Now, the question comes up how to recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook? However, without deep knowledge of Outlook and Exchange Server, it is difficult for a user to recover hard deleted emails from MS Outlook. Therefore, in this post, we will discuss the ways to recover shift deleted emails from Outlook and how to possibly make user to learn access permanently those emails with in seamless manner.

Recover Permanently Deleted Emails From Outlook

There are two situations one in which the user accidentally deletes an email and other is hard deleted emails. There are chances that emails deleted by the user may be present somewhere like, it may be hidden from normal view etc. If one deletes data accidentally, then it can be retrieved as it must be present in the Deleted Item folder. But to retrieve permanently deleted emails in Outlook, one needs to look for Recoverable Item folder. Moreover, if Exchange Server Administrator has turned on Deleted Items Recovery on the server side. Then, the data items deleted using shift+deleted are kept in Recoverable Item Folder for 14 days. So, according to the retention period of 30 days for Exchange Online Mailboxes one can recover permanently deleted emails.

Solution to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails in Outlook

Case 1: Recover Deleted Email Folder from Outlook Deleted Item Folder

The accidentally deleted emails or data items by the user are present in Deleted Item Folder. If a user wants to restore shift deleted emails from Outlook 2016 then he/she has to follow the steps given below:

1. To start the process, open Microsoft Outlook application on your local machine
2. Now, navigate to folder list of emails and choose the Deleted Items folder
3. Look for the message in the Deleted Item folder
4. If you see that message is present there, then right-click on the message and click on the Move >> Other Folder option
5. Now, click on Inbox option to move the email message back to inbox folder and click on OK button
6. You can also restore the other data items of MS Outlook via using the same procedure

Case 2: Recover Permanently Deleted Emails in Outlook using Hex Editor and Scanpst.exe Tool
Scanpst.exe is a free tool provided by Microsoft to help the Outlook users to resolve normal corruption in the .pst file. This tool can also be used to recover hard deleted emails from MS Outlook. Basically, it searches the items flagged as deleted and rebuilds the connection after the scanning process. During the usage of this tool, it checks every item folder such as sub-folders, message etc. Note: Before using scanpst.exe to recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook you must use Hex Editor.

Steps to Recover Hard Deleted Emails from Outlook

1. To begin, create a duplicate copy of Outlook PST
2. Now, download and open Hex Editor and open the PST file (emails or other data) you want to recover with Hex Editor 
3. Select the value which started from 07 to next 13 and then go to Edit and File Selection and click on OK 
4. This will replace all values by 00 
5. Now, save PST file after clearing the positions, now you have a corrupted PST file 
6. Run scanpst.exe utility and then browse and scan corrupt PST 
7. Repair PST and then open the PST file 
8. Now, check those deleted items weather you have retrieve permanently deleted emails from Outlook or not.

Quick Hack For Outlook Users

While recovering any piece of code user need to follow these manual steps that helps to retrieve permanently deleted mails and other data items. These days professional approach to this problem has rapidly changed user doesn't even care about the Outlook data by repairing any corrupted PST file. As they import PST to Office 365 mailbox where they never face such problem of data loss or recovering data items. 

Time to Wrap Up

Recovering permanently deleted items from Outlook is a challenging task. Now, with the help of this write-up user can easily recover soft and hard deleted emails and data items. Two different methods to recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook 2010 and other versions are explained in the above-section but it is always advised to a user to choose a secure and simple approach that is Outlook Recovery tool to repair and recover deleted items folder without any limitations.

Move Mailboxes from Exchange EDB to Office 365

Migration of Exchange server to Exchange online becomes a challenge for any organization based on the number of users, license subscriptions, etc. Let us dive in to learn the process of migrating your organization from On-premise Exchange to Office 365.
A guided tour for everyone irrespective of their expertise in the field of Microsoft Exchange.
Here we will discuss several different methods based on factors such as organizations mailboxes count, cutover or staged migration etc. There are two techniques that are mostly employed for migrating mailboxes from Exchange Server to Exchange Online Office 365 Viz. Cutover (Express) Migration, and Staged Migration.

First - Cutover (Express) Migration

It is the quickest way to move your mailboxes from an Exchange server to Exchange Online and is suitable for a limited number of mailboxes.
The criteria given below should be checked before progressing with Migration of On-Premises  Office 365.

• On-Premises Exchange Server version should be one of these: Microsoft Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010 or 2013.
• There should be no more than 2000 mailboxes.

The criteria show that limitation to 2000 mailboxes provides a better solution for small to medium-sized organizations. If your organization meets these criteria, follow the below steps to begin the migration process:

• Make a Receiving Point: Firstly, create an empty mail-enabled security group in Office 365 by following the navigation as follows: Office 365 Admin Centre > Group > Create new. This will create a new group.



• Create a Migration Endpoint: Here we will link Office 365 with Exchange On-Premises Server. To do this, go to the Exchange Admin Centre, and then to Recipients > Migration > New > Migrate to Exchange Online. Select Cutover Migration in the selection window. Information about migration endpoint can be seen on the next page.
• Grant User Licenses: Office 365 licenses must be granted to all the mailboxes owners needs to be migrated to provide access to their mail. Follow the instructions carefully to achieve this.

• Re-route the Domain: Re-routing the domain is necessary to ensure that all the emails whether sent or received go through the new channel. Follow this simple guide to configure your domain.

Second - Staged Migration

If Express Migration doesn’t suit your organization’s requirements then Staged Migration is the other migration option, that will surely work.
Although Staged Migration also requires your organization to meet several criteria to ensure that this is the right approach for your situation.

• Exchange Server 2003 or 2007 versions are the only that support a staged migration.
• Mailboxes are more than 2000 mailboxes.

The above criteria show that a Staged Migration is for larger organizations. However, an experienced IT Administrator usually holds the responsibility for the migration of Exchange server to Exchange online. And if you choose to DIY, along with the stated criteria is met one can follow these steps for a full migration.

• User Synchronization: Synchronization the list of users using your Exchange Server with Exchange Online must be done before proceeding.
• Make a List of Mailboxes Do prepare a list of the mailboxes that need to be migrated to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This makes the task easy as the task of adding individual addresses and speeds up the process. The list can be imported to Office 365 for adding the users.
• Complete the Exchange Server to Exchange Online Transfer Start the Staged Migration to complete the transfer of mailboxes On-Premises Exchange to Office 365. Now assign licenses to the approved mailboxes. To do this click here (near the bottom of the article).

Trouble-Free Solution to migrate Exchange Server to Exchange Online

Alternative solutions are available moving mailboxes from Exchange Server to Office 365 by Cutover Migration and Staged Migration. Limitations are overcome by using this tool namely, “Exchange to Office 365 ” to migrate Exchange 2013 to Office 365 step by step. Designed so that it moves the complete data from On-Premises Exchange to Office 365. Some advanced features of tool include Exchange Mailbox Mapping, View Active Directory Details, Apply Email Filter, Empty Exchange Server, etc.

Conclusion

We conclude that one can use manual method described above for both express and staged migration and also by employing a third-party tool such as SysTools Office 365 Migrator to ease the process of migrating Exchange server to Exchange Online.