Importing .pst files to Office 365

[Meresgi]

@Xanthe, yeah I completely new to exchange so just trying to get my head around everything and how its all set up. Probably gonna work on this again this weekend and see what I can do in terms of migration with that link Rat posted and your info. My only concern was doing something that would break their email completely if I touched the exchange server, but since the server is going to be removed anyways soon as long as I can migrate their mailboxes to Office 365 and point Outlook to that i'll be in the clear.

From what the guy on tech support said yesterday, alot of small businesses are having issues with their migrations to Office 365 and moving client data and shit.

[rezn0r]

I did exactly this for my company (50 employees) in November and the way I did it, which I'm sure is not the best way, worked perfectly. Anything smaller than say 500mb I left alone until I was actually migrating their client to the new server. Anything larger (most people) I copied the pst to a temporary XP system I had with Outlook 2007 installed on it. I would delete the mail profile, add theirs, and then import the pst to their inbox. Anything huge (3gb+? maybe, and yes we had a lot that were 6-16gb...) would take over night, but it worked fine.

What I had done before changing our domain/mx records was just set our old server to automatically forward a copy of everything to Office 365's (yourcompany.onmicrosoft.com, etc.) - that way there was a clear cutoff date that I would know duplicates would be possible so I could easily delete them.

edit: Sorry, I actually posted this before reading most of the thread (and I only just skimmed it as well).

Looks like this is basically exactly what Rata said except on a per-client basis. Pre-2010 Outlook can't use two Exchange accounts at once (as far as I know) so this might not be possible given your setup. We weren't coming from an Exchange server.

Manually configuring Outlook for O365 (when auto-detect settings won't work due to the domain not being changed)
To manually setup Exchange (don't let it auto-detect settings... because you didn't change domain settings yet) log into the user's O365 web GUI (portal.microsoftonline.com, but you will need their current passwords, the person who created the accounts will have these), click Outlook, then click Help(?)/About. In there you will see some servers listed. This is the server to use for THAT user. It will be something like pod#####.outlook.com.

I just dug up a link that helped me: http://blogs.technet.com/b/hot/archi...ffice-365.aspx

I know there's a lot of bad reviews out there, and I probably didn't use the best technique, but most people never saw an interruption in their mail & a bunch probably don't even realize we're on a new server and I don't really have any Office 365 complaints. I actually setup a smaller company that we use as a distributor here on Google Apps for Business & I like O365 better.

One other thing that you may run into if you guys use network scanners to send by email is that O365 requires a TLS connection, which some of ours didn't. I got around this by setting up an SMTP relay on one of our 2k8 servers and pointing the printers at that. I also made a dedicated account for sending documents ([email protected]) which the relay uses for authentication, which is required by O365. It works perfect though.

I'm going to subscribe to the thread so I remember to check back. Good luck!

[Meresgi]

Thanks Rez, that helps a lot, I was wondering about bypassing the autofill in that the domain does when you just try to create a new profile and I had no idea where to find the settings to input that shit manually.

[mahituna]

This will work if your doing only a few mailboxes. I've searched the Microsoft sites and all the MVP's and other initials offer zilch for solutions.
Okay,this assumes you have a working 365 account/Exchange Online

1. Export the outlook files in pst. format.
2, Go to Control Panel and delete the email profile, (the Mail Icon)
3. Start Outlook, you will need to create new profile, use your 365/Online Exchange info (email, password)
4 Outlook will search online for your account, once its found just follow the rest of the wizard (usually Ok's).
5. Once it's all configured you then import the .pst file you exported in step 1.

Good Luck,

[R.S Branton]

This will work if your doing only a few mailboxes. I've searched the Microsoft sites and all the MVP's and other initials offer zilch for solutions.
Okay,this assumes you have a working 365 account/Exchange Online

1. Export the outlook files in pst. format.
2, Go to Control Panel and delete the email profile, (the Mail Icon)
3. Start Outlook, you will need to create new profile, use your 365/Online Exchange info (email, password)
4 Outlook will search online for your account, once its found just follow the rest of the wizard (usually Ok's).
5. Once it's all configured you then import the .pst file you exported in step 1.

Good Luck,

1. Agree with your first step.
2. Not sure why you would want to delete your old profile while you still have not migrated the inforamtion, instead of deleting old profile, why not create a new one? Outlook supports multiple Outlook mail profiles.
3. If you are not going for deletion, then in Control Panel - Mail - Show profiles you will have option to create new mail profile and add account.
4. True,
5. Yup.
Migrating pst to Office365 is quite easy task, especially if your Outlook already has Exchange account of that Office365.
If you are unsure about the steps, there always are companies who will do the job for you, company called SafePSTBackup managed to complete migration in my enviroment.

[Ratatapa]

Yay useless bump for post count