Archive mailbox to Office 365 migration

I. Plan the Archive mailbox migration to Office 365

1. Take a backup of all the Archive mailboxes on the Exchange server before you perform the migration.
2. Ensure that you create and enable the In-Place Archiving on Office 365. See steps to enable In-Place archive in Office 365.
3. Determine whether you want to migrate the Archive mailboxes to Office 365 primary mailbox or Archive mailbox.
4. If you want to migrate the Archive mailbox directly to Office 365 Archive mailbox, enable the auto-expanding archiving feature on Office 365.
5. Enable the auto-expanding feature only if you require more storage space.
6. By default, the Archives have 100GB of storage when you enable them and the auto-expanding adds additional storage (unlimited archiving) when the threshold is reached. This limit is expandable up to 1.5TB per mailbox.
7. Remember that the auto-expanding works only on Office 365 and you cannot run it on the on-premises Exchange server.
8. See the list of auto-expanding archiving restrictions and consider the following points for all users.
9. If you would like to learn more about archiving, see how the auto-expanding archiving works
10. Unlimited archiving is a premium feature that requires Exchange online plan 2 or Exchange online archiving license.
11. Verify if your Exchange online mailbox license allows the archiving feature.
12. If your on-premises archive mailboxes are greater than the Exchange online auto-expanding limits, you can split them into PST files and migrate the PST to Office 365 using EdbMails Office 365 migration tool.

II. Prerequisites to migrate Archive mailbox to Office 365

Before you migrate In-Place Archive from Exchange to Office 365, you must prepare the target Office 365 server as described in the following section.

1. Ensure that you meet the network and bandwidth requirements for the migration. See network and migration planning, performance factors and best practices for Office 365 migration.
2. Prepare your target Office 365 tenant. See tenant roadmap for Microsoft 365.
3. Purchase an Office 365 licensing plan specific to your needs. You can also sign up for a 30 day free trial and decide to go with a suitable one later. Compare Office 365 business plans and Compare Office 365 enterprise plans
4. Create mailboxes for your users in your organization and assign suitable licenses to them. For more information, see the following links.
   1.  Add users and assign licenses to Office 365 users
   2.  Add several users at the same time to Office 365
   3.  Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts
5. If you plan to migrate the In-Place Archive to Public folders on Office 365, ensure that you create and configure the Public folder mailboxes on the target server.

    Create Office 365 Public folder and assign mailbox user

6. If you plan to migrate In-Place archives to Office 365, enable the archive mailbox on the target server. See steps to enable online archive in Office 365.
7. Assign the Organization Management role group in Exchange online to the admin user. It is an elevated permission that is required to migrate Public folders.
8. Set the impersonation rights for the admin account in Office 365 to migrate mailboxes on behalf of other users in your organization. Verify if the source and target admin account in general has the following management roles assigned:
   1. ApplicationImpersonation
   2. View-Only Configuration
   3. View-Only Recipients
   4. Public Folders
   5. User management administrator/Global administrator
9. Check if the Global admin account with the management roles has a valid and non-hidden mailbox on the target server.
10. Configure Office 365 to send and receive large messages

     Follow the steps to increase the message size on Office 365 to 150MB.

11. If you have a custom email domain from the source to which you want to receive emails after the migration, you must add and verify the custom domain on Office 365.

     See steps to add a custom domain to Office 365 and steps to add DNS records to connect your domain.

III. Migrate Exchange Archive mailbox to Office 365

• Step 1: Download and install EdbMails Exchange migration tool
  • Download EdbMails and install the application on any computer that is connected to the source and target environment. You can also perform the migration operation by installing EdbMails on a non-Exchange server computer.

     See a detailed list of EdbMails system requirements for Exchange migration.

    

  • Launch the application and click 'Login' or 'Start Your Free Trial'.

    

  • Select the migration technique as Exchange migration

    Select the option 'Live Exchange migration' (Hosted, hybrid, on-premises & more) from the drop down.

    

  Note: If the Standard folders (such as Inbox, Calendar, Contacts) in the source Office 365 mailboxes are initialized with a different language, follow the details in the link to migrate these folders to the respective system folders on the target (destination) server.

  For Instance: If your source Inbox folder is named 'Boîte de réception', which is in French language and you migrate this folder directly to the target server, then by default it will not be mapped to the 'Inbox' folder on the target server. In order to map the folder with the french name to the respective folder, change the regional settings on the target server to match that of your source mailbox folder language (in this case, it is French).

   Click here to know the steps to change the language and regional settings on Office 365

• Step 2: Connect to the source Exchange server as Global Admin
  • Log in as a global admin if you are migrating mailboxes on behalf of other users in your organization. If you do not have the necessary permissions, set the impersonation rights for the admin user account on Exchange.
  • In the Connect to Exchange server (Source) window, select 'Connect using Global Admin User' and 'Connect to Archive Mailbox (In-Place Archive)'. You can also load the mailboxes using a CSV file. See how to connect to Archive mailboxes with EdbMails.

   With EdbMails, you can migrate mailboxes, public folders, and archive mailboxes from the source Exchange to the target server.

  

• Step 3: Select the mailboxes and connect to Office 365
  1. Select the Archive mailboxes that you want to migrate to the target Office 365 server.
  2. Click 'Migrate to Office 365' to setup the connection with the target server.

  Tip: If this is the first time you’re migrating with EdbMails, the migration is a full migration. On subsequent migrations from the same source to the target, the migration is incremental.

  

  Tip: EdbMails provides the following additional options and filters to help you customize the migration task.

  1. Additional Include and Exclude Filter Options and migration settings for mailboxes.
  2. Filter emails by Date: Migrate to Exchange 2019 by applying the Date filter
  3. Filter emails by Size: Exclude emails from migration larger than a specified size.
  4. Filter emails by domain name: Extract email sent to and received from a particular domain.

  

  Add a suitable label to the job for identification. This enables you to quickly load the application’s settings for future export operations. You can view all the labels by clicking 'View Log' that contains all the details of the previous operation.

• Step 4: Connect to the target Office 365 server

  In the Connect to Office 365 (Target) window, select the authentication method as Auto or Manual registration for modern authentication and the connection method as Mailboxes, Public folder or Archive Mailbox. Enter the global administrator credentials to authenticate. With EdbMails, you have the following migration choices:

  • Migrate the source Archive mailbox to the target Archive mailbox
  • Migrate the source Archive mailbox to target mailboxes
  • Migrate the source Archive mailbox to Shared mailboxes

   Connect to Office 365 server using secure modern authentication

  

  After you authenticate and log in successfully, select one of the methods to load the mailboxes. You can also load and migrate the mailboxes using a CSV file.

• Step 5: Perform mapping and start Archive mailbox migration to Office 365

  Map the mailboxes and folders between the source and the target. The mapping activity in EdbMails can automatically match and map the mailboxes and folders and saves time when you’re migrating a large number of mailboxes.

  

  That's it! During the migration, you can view the progress as shown where you can also pause and resume the operation. An appropriate message will be displayed upon completion. Verify the list of migrated folders and mailbox items with EdbMails text-based log report.

Benefits of EdbMails for Archive mailbox migration

EdbMails Exchange migration tool automates the transfer of Archive mailboxes to Office 365. Compared to the manual methods, EdbMails graphical user interface enables you to select and migrate folders, mailboxes and mail items easily without requiring PowerShell scripts.

1. EdbMails does not cause data loss or downtime during the Archive mailbox migration.
2. Migrate Archive mailboxes of any size between Exchange and Office 365.
3. Ideal solution for both small businesses and enterprise level users to migrate from Exchange to Office 365.
4. The application’s incremental migration feature ensures no duplicate items during subsequent migrations to the same target.
5. EdbMails provides automated features such as mailbox/folder mapping, setting impersonation rights, which reduces the administrator’s manual efforts.
6. It replicates the mailbox items and folders from the source to the target without affecting your data.
7. EdbMails is highly secure and uses modern authentication with TLS encryption for Office 365 migration.
8. Free 24x7 customer support facility with a free trial option to test the software’s working.

 Related Links

1. Steps to migrate Archive mailbox to Exchange
2. Steps to migrate Public folder to Office 365
3. Steps to migrate In-Place Archive between Office 365 tenants
4. Steps to migrate Exchange 2016 Public folder to Office 365
5. Steps to migrate In-Place Archive from EDB to Office 365