Exchange Public folder to Office 365 migration

1. Prerequisites to migrate EDB to Microsoft 365

   Before you import the mailboxes from EDB 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.
      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 source Public folders 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 want to migrate the source Public folder to a Shared Mailbox on the target, create a Shared Mailbox and configure the settings.

        See steps to create a Shared Mailbox 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 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.

2. Public folders to Office 365 migration using EdbMails

   • Step 1: Download EdbMails EDB to Office 365 software setup

     • Download EdbMails and install the application on your computer. Follow the instructions that appear on screen to complete the installation.

        See a detailed list of EdbMails system requirements for EDB recovery and migration.

       

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

       

     • Select the recovery technique as 'EDB to PST, EDB to Office 365 and EDB to Exchange'.

       

   • Step 2: Select the offline EDB file for recovery and migration

     Before starting the Public folder migration, take a copy of the EDB file as a backup. Browse and select the EDB from your computer that contains the Public folders. EdbMails does not depend on Exchange server or Active Directory (AD) and enables you to directly migrate mailboxes and folders from an offline EDB file to Office 365.

     

      Tip: EdbMails supports mailbox.edb, pub.edb, priv.edb and STM files from legacy Exchange servers. If you are using Exchange 2003 then EdbMails will automatically look for the corresponding STM file in the same location. For Exchange 2007 or above, the STM file is no longer used.

   • Step 3: Preview and select the Public folders for migration

     EdbMails first performs a recovery operation and fully restores the EDB file in case it is corrupted. You can view the Public folders and preview the mail items such as emails, contacts, folders, notes, tasks, calendars from the application’s preview pane.

      Tip: EdbMails can recover and migrate deleted Exchange mail items to Office 365

     1. Click the 'Show All the folders' check box which is present above the Tree view as shown.
     2. Expand the mailbox and navigate to the 'Recoverable Items' folder.
     3. Click the 'Deletions' folder to view the deleted mails.

     

     Select the Public folders and click the 'Migrate to Office 365' button to continue. Alternatively, you can right click on the selected mailboxes / folders and select the option 'Migrate Selected Mailboxes / Folders to Office 365 Server'.

     

      Tip: EdbMails provides the following additional options to help you customize the migration to Office 365 based on a Date and other mailbox rules.

     1. Additional Include and Exclude Filter Options.
     2. Filter emails by Date: Migrate emails to Office 365 by applying the Date filter
     3. Filter emails by Size: Exclude emails and attachments from migration, which are larger than a specified size.
     4. Filter emails by domain name: Extract emails 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.

      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.

     Note: If the Standard folders (such as Inbox, Calendar, Contacts) in the source EDB file 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 destination 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

      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.

   • Step 4: Map the mailboxes and folders between the source and the target

     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. Finally, verify the list of migrated folders and mailbox items with EdbMails text-based log report.

     

 Related Links

1. Steps to convert Exchange EDB to PST
2. Steps to migrate EDB to Live Exchange
3. Steps to export Exchange Public folders to PST
4. Steps to migrate Public folders from Live Exchange to Office 365