The ability to migrate email to Office 365 from other systems can be very useful for an organization or company, but some things should be considered during the process.
Migration can only occur into a user’s inbox or other mail folders. Migrating calendar items, tasks, or contacts are not able to be done with this particular type of migration. It is also only possible to migrate a maximum amount of 500,000 items from a user’s mailbox, and individual email items cannot exceed 35 MB, while migrating.
A few steps should be considered and planned in order to have an easy migration process. While a maximum of 2,000 mailboxes can be migrated through Exchange migration, it is easier to only migrate 150 mailboxes at a time. An on-premise organization’s domain must also be accepted as a domain that is owned by the organization’s Office 365 account, in order for the migration to be successful. In addition, a license will have to be assigned to the users whose mailboxes were transferred over to Office 365.
When users decide to begin the migration process, they should start by configuring Outlook anywhere on the on-premise Exchange Server. Outlook Anywhere is used by the migration services in order to connect on-premise Exchange Servers. A certificate that is issued by a trusted certification authority is required by Outlook Anywhere configuration so that the cutover migration can occur with Office 365. Users should also check to make sure that their Exchange organization is able to connect to Outlook Anywhere before the migration begins. They should also make sure that Unified Messaging (UM) is turned off for the on-premise mailboxes that are being migrated.
Migrating the Emails
With those steps being taken into consideration, users can confidently begin the process of safely migrating their emails.
- Select the “About the Office 365 Admin Center” and log in.
- Select Setup > Data migration. The Select your data service dashboard should open.
- Select the email provider the user is migrating from. After choosing a provider, the Select users to start migrating email messages page will include a list of all of the users with their source email already pre-filled.
- If the provider is not listed, select Other email sources. In the Select your data service page, the IMAP connection data must be filled in to test the connection. Once the connection is verified, the email address will be added to the list of already added users.
- Once the required information is entered, choose Start Migration
- The migration status will then be Starting, Queued, Syncing, or Synced. If the status is Synced, the IMAP migration will continuously synchronize the source email until Stop Migration is selected. When the user is finished with migrations, choose Close Connection.
Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, WheelHouse Solutions can assist you in getting started with Microsoft Office 365 or any of the suite of Microsoft products and services. We’ll work with you to analyze your needs and recommend a strategy that’s custom designed for your business. If you would like more information about Microsoft Office 365, click here or call us at 314-492-2506 to speak with one of our knowledgeable sales representatives.