Migration of personal or professional emails to Office 365 from any on-premises Email client gives you the flexibility to access your emails from any smart phone device or system that is connected online. Office 365 also offers a plethora of services that strengthen the productivity of your emails and business. As Outlook is the majorly used email client, so most of you have to migrate Outlook to Office 365.
There is Import/Export option in the Outlook utilizing which you can export your emails to an external PST file. Later, you can import the PST file to the Outlook again with an Office 365 account. Here are the following reasons that enforce you to migrate Outlook to Office 365.
1. Conversion of emails accounts
When you were using the older emails like yahoo (test…@yahoo.com), AOL (test…@aol.com), and want to move a new email account like test…@contoso.com.
Although you can create the new test…@contoso.com at the Outlook application, it will not have the emails from the old account.
2. Change of PC to PC
When you are changing your PC from the old one to a new better one, then you will need to install Outlook again. In such a condition, you want your older emails also. So, you need to export the emails to the PST file and import the PST file to the new computer which is a time taking procedure and need to be followed every time you switch to another system which is a great possibility.
3. Periodic Backups
The backups of the large inboxes reduce the size of the whole mailbox and a period backup increases the safety of data. After taking the backup of data in the PST file you should keep the file in any external location like a different computer or a USB drive. Rather, securing your emails to cloud location accessible from anywhere is a wise decision.
Native Migration Way to migrate Outlook to Office 365 Mailbox
The manual Migration process of the Outlook process needs exporting the emails to an external PST file and then importing the PST file to another Outlook application with the already configured Office 365 account.
Export emails to PST file
- Start the Outlook application.
- At the top left-hand side, click File.
- Follow Open & Export>>Import/Export.
- Choose the second option of ‘Export to a file.’ Click Next.
- Choose Outlook Data File (PST) and click Next.
- Select the email account and expand the folders to select. Make sure that you have checked the option of ‘Include Subfolders’ so that everything in the account will be exported. Choose the contacts, calendar, inbox, journal, and click Next.
- Click the Browse button to select the location of the PST file where the file will reside. Click OK to continue.
- Manage the duplicate items with the exported items by clicking the Options and specifying what to do when exporting the data in the existing PST file.
- Click Finish.
- Outlook starts the export process.
NOTE: While creating an export process if you choose the password-protected option, then it increases the security of your PST file. So, in most cases, you should choose to have a password in the PST file.
After exporting the mailbox data in the PST file, you need to go to Outlook again and import the PST file to Office 365 account’s mailbox.
Import PST to Outlook
- Launch the Microsoft Outlook application on another system with configured Office 365 account.
- At the top left-hand side of Outlook ribbon, click File.
- Follow Open & Export>>Import/Export.
- Choose ‘Import from another program or file’, then click Next.
- Choose Outlook Data File (PST) and click Next.
- Browse the PST file that you had exported earlier, then under the Options, there are three options –
Replicate duplicates with items imported.
Allow duplicates to be created.
Do not import duplicates. - Choose among the three options and click Next.
- If you had assigned a password to the PST file, then you need to input the password and click OK.
- Select the Outlook Data File folder, Check the box ‘Include Folders’ and choose the option ‘Import items into the same folder in’ and then select the Office 365 account address from the drop-down list.
- Click Finish.
- Outlook will start importing the content of the PST file to the Office 365 mailbox. Later, you can check for all the content in the mailbox.
Note: Apart from this manual Import and Export feature usage to move PST emails to Office 365 mailbox, there are two more native ways (Import Service in Office 365) to migrate PST emails to Office 365 known as Network Upload and Drive Shipping methods. Both methods require technical expertise, multi-staged and are complex in nature, so not-so convenient to perform and not recommended.
Benefits to Migrate Outlook to Office 365
- One of the main benefits that you get is three extra apps namely Outlook, Access and Publisher with Office 365 Home
- According to new update that you can install Office 365 on five devices and use Office 365 in all five devices at once
- MS Office 365 also comes with a 1TB OneDrive cloud storage which is very helpful for its users to access, share and save their emails and other storage facility for Outlook data on cloud
- You will always have an updated Outlook on the latest available version of Office 365
- Using this facility, you can save the extra money you spend on upgrading to new Outlook or Office suite
- With the help of Office 365, users can access email and any other Office apps from any different place at any time
- It is cost-effective email solutions and the best platform of Office 365
- It provides back-up of all emails also automatically, saves your files and automatically updates the latest version of any file
- Improve the efficiency of business by migrating your email to Office 365 and enhance collaboration within your business network
- Office 365 also offers you the conferencing tool to connect with other users so you can share notes, screen and video chat through one application
Final words
When you wish to migrate Outlook to Office 365 mailbox, then the inbuilt import/export method is suitable for the single mailbox. But if you want to migrate multiple numbers of mailboxes to Office 365, then you will need to spend an ample amount of time in migration for each of the mailboxes. Also, there is no option to filter important emails and exclude the non-important ones. But, if you want to conduct a safer and secure migration, then you should use a professional Outlook PST Repair tool with adequate features.
