You might want to export emails from Exchange online for any number of reasons including if you are leaving the company, or for any legal reasons. But unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t provide a straightforward way that you can use to do the same. In this article, we are going to talk about different ways you can perform Exchange online export mailbox to PST. We are going to take a look at both manual and automated ways that we can use including eDiscovery and PowerShell.
Exchange Online Export Mailbox To PST Using eDiscovery
eDiscovery is a feature that is baked into Microsoft Office 365 security and compliance center. It is the procedure used for identifying and delivering electronic content searches from Exchange Online mailboxes. Let us dive into how eDiscovery export tool can be used.
Steps
- Log into your office 365 account using admin credentials and open Administrative center from the menu at the top left corner of the screen.
- Go to the Admin center and then click on security and compliance menu.
- Navigate to permissions from there and then click on eDiscovery manager.
- Click on the edit button and see if the account that you used to log in is on the list.
- If it isn’t then click edit and then add. In the next window, a list of all users in the Office 365 tenant is displayed. Select the user you used to log in and click on next.
- Now from the menu on the left click on the search option and then click on Content search.
- In the next window select the new search option.
- Now select the mailbox which you want to export.
- If needed you can use filters to filter out files from the mailbox.
- If you want to export the entire mailbox then don’t give any conditions.
- Click on save and then on run. Now give a name and description for the search.
- Once saved the content searching will begin in the background. Now go back to the content search window hit refresh and select your search.
- Click on more and select export files.
- In the new windows that pop up select if you want to export encrypted files.
- Once you select the required settings click on the export button at the bottom of the screen.
- Now the data will start exporting, you can see the process in the export tab.
- Copy the export key and click on the download button.
- Now a tool called eDiscovery will be downloaded to your system.
- Enter the export key click on browse and provide a destination to save your PST files
- Click on the start button the tool will begin Exchange Online export mailbox to PST.
Problems with the eDiscovery tool
Using the eDiscovery tool comes with a few problems too.
- For the export process, you have to use either Internet Explorer or Edge browser. It is simply not possible to export mailboxes to PST using third-party browsers.
- You have to make sure that the export key should be safe, or else anyone can download and access your data if the export key is leaked.
- The tool doesn’t have the functionality to secure the downloaded files with password protection.
- There is a high chance that there will be duplicate emails in your PST file.
- Users who aren’t good at technical might find it complex and also might find them hard to execute.
Exchange Online Export Mailbox to PST Using PowerShell
If for any reason the eDiscovery tool isn’t working then you can try using PowerShell. But this is the most complicated way that we are going to discuss today so if don’t know what you are doing then you should just skip ahead to using the professional tool.
- The first and foremost step that we have to perform is to connect Microsoft Exchange Server using PowerShell.
- Run the following command to start the export process.
“$UserCredential = Get-Credential”
- Enter the credentials of Office 365 account under Windows PowerShell Credentials wizard and run the commands below.
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection”
Import-PSSession $Session
- After connecting the Exchange server and PowerShell.We have to allow permissions to the correct mailbox so that it can be exported via PowerShell.
- “Add-MailboxPermission – User example1@example.com -Identity example2@example.com -AccessRights FullAccess -InheritanceType All”.
Here example2@example.com receives complete access to example1@example.com
- Once you have run the commands make sure the data of the first mailbox is present in the second mailbox in the left pane.
- Now we have to configure Outlook to download all the emails.
- Click on the file menu and select the info page and then go to account settings.
- Then click on account settings again and select the account.
- Press on the change button and make sure that the option” Use Chaced Exchange Mode” is enabled.
-
- Now we also have to export the files as PST.
- Click on file menu>>Open &export>>import /export option.
- Choose the option to export to a file from the list and click on Next.
- In the next menu select .pst option and click on next.
- Select the mailbox you want to export and click on next and make sure the subfolders option is enabled.
- Provide a name and a location to save the PST file.
- If needed enter a password for the PST file, else just leave it blank and click on OK.
- Exchange Online mailbox export to PST will be completed when the process is completed.
- To verify if the process is completed check the size of the mailbox size on the server and compare them with the PST file.
- First, right-click on the mailbox and select Data File Properties.
- Open the General tab and click on the folder size button.
- Select the data tab and note down the size.
- Check the properties of the PST file and compare the size noted from Outlook to the size of the PST file.
- After the migration process now we have to remove all the permissions that we give allowed. Use the following commands.
Remove-MailboxPermission -User example1@example.com -Identity example2@example.com -AccessRights FullAccess”
- Now we also have to export the files as PST.
- Use the following commands to close down the PowerShell sessions.
Remove-PSSession $Session
Professional Way to Export Exchange Online Mailbox to PST File
As we have seen there are limitations to manual methods. Some of the users might also find it difficult to follow through with the manual methods since they are a bit more on the technical side and are complicated. Office 365 Export Tool overcomes almost all of these problems and also helps users easily export their mailbox to PST files. Let us look at the steps we have to use.
Steps for Professional Tool
- Download and run the tool on your system.
- Check on the “is admin option” and sign in with your admin credentials.
- Go through the sign-in process in the new window that opens.
- Once signed in you can see all the user ids.
- Select the mailbox that you want to export and click on the next button.
- Select the PST option and check on the checkbox near “Split options for Outlook data file” and enter the size you want to split the PST file at.
- Check on the checkboxes near the workload items you want to export and if needed apply a date filter.
- Click on the Browse option and select a destination to save the files.
- Press on the button to start the export process.
- Once the process is completed click on the save report option to save the export report as a CSV file. Also using the export report you can verify if all the mailboxes are properly exported as PST files.
Conclusion
As we have seen from the above manual methods have their limitations. It might not be for everyone too since they get technical and are complicated to execute. Therefore, for a superior and seamless experience, we also recommend using the above-mentioned tool to perform Exchange online export mailbox to PST.