EdbMails Software for AOL to Microsoft 365 Migration

America Online (AOL) was once a popular email service provider, with many users having accounts with them. It was acquired by Verizon in July 2015, and after Office 365 gained popularity among business and enterprise users, AOL's long-time customers are considering migrating to Microsoft 365. While AOL has a simple user interface for basic use, it lacks advanced features from an organizational standpoint. AOL has also become outdated in comparison to brand identities such as Office 365, Outlook, and Exchange. There has also been an increase in user queries such as "How to import emails from AOL to Office 365" or "How to migrate AOL emails to Office 365 step by step." We'll go over how to use EdbMails IMAP Migration tool to transfer all of your data from AOL to Office 365 in the most reliable way possible.

1. AOL to Office 365 migration plan

   One of the key considerations when switching to Office 365 is planning. To reduce risks and prevent data loss, you must set up a backup strategy, prepare the source and target environments, and test your backup strategy. Here is a list of things to think about before the migration.

   1. Make a thorough backup of your current mailboxes, mail, and source data.
   2. Choose the quantity and size of mailboxes you want to move from AOL to Office 365.
   3. Make a list of all the AOL data and permissions you wish to transfer.
   4. On Office 365, create the relevant user mailboxes and assign licenses.
   5. Make sure you have enough bandwidth and network capacity to relocate.
   6. Before you begin the actual move, carry out a test migration.

2. Pre migration activities for AOL to Office 365 migration

   The following are the pre-migration activities for migrating AOL to Office 365

   1. Ensure that you have admin access on the source and target server

      The admin account that has all the necessary permissions to migrate mailboxes on behalf of all the users in your organization. Make sure to assign the Organization Management role group and impersonation rights to the admin user on Office 365.

   2. Create Office 365 mailboxes and assign the licenses

       Click here to Add users and assign licenses to Office 365 users

       Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts

   3. To migrate AOL mailboxes to Office 365 Public folders, ensure that you create a public folder and assign users to mailboxes on the target server.

       Create Office 365 Public folder and assign mailbox user

   4. If you are in plan to migrate mailboxes to Office 365 archive mailboxes, ensure to enable In-Place archive in Office 365 admin center.

       Steps to enable archive mailbox in Microsoft 365.

   5. If you have a custom email domain from the source which you want to retain and receive emails to, you must add and verify the domain on Office 365.

       Steps to add a custom domain to Office 365 and steps to add DNS records to connect your domain.

   6. Customize the message size limits for large size messages

       Follow the steps to increase the message size on Office 365 to 150MB. See message size limits on Office 365 for more information.

3. AOL to Office 365 migration using EdbMails

   Both manual and automated approaches are detailed in this article. With the automated way there is no chance of data loss, and the processes are straightforward. Let's go over these in more detail:

   1. Migrate AOL to Office 365 using Outlook
   2. EdbMails IMAP migration solution to directly AOL to Office 365

   Method 1 : Steps to migrate AOL to Office 365 using Microsoft Outlook

   • Step 1: Launch Outlook (2016 and 2019), click File and select ‘Add account’
   • Step 2: Enter the AOL email address you want to add and configure.
   • Step 3: Click the Advanced Options and select ‘Let me set up my account manually’
   • Step 4: Click ‘Connect’ and select the account type as ‘IMAP’
   • Step 5: Enter the incoming and outgoing AOL mail server details for IMAP and add your account on Outlook.
   • Step 6: Export and use the PST file to sync and migrate email to Office 365.

     

   Method 2 : Steps to migrate AOL to Office 365 using EdbMails

   An easy method to directly transfer AOL to Office 365 is by using EdbMails IMAP migration tool. There is no need for intermediate steps and you can connect to your source account and target Office 365 and get all your emails effortlessly.

   • Step 1: Download and install EdbMails migration application

     Download and install EdbMails on your computer and launch it after finishing the setup.

     ‘Login’ to the application or ‘Start Your Free Trial’

     Launch EdbMails and login to the application (Same credentials you have used to register / purchase the license). If you would like to try the application for free, then click on ‘Start Your Free Trial’.

     

     Select the option IMAP migration

     

   • Step 2: Connect to the AOL server using IMAP connection details

     If you want to connect to a single user mailbox, enter the Host Name (imap.aol.com), Port Number (993 for SSL), and account credentials

     

     Check 'Multiple (bulk) Users/Accounts Migration' for multiple users. Select ‘Connect to IMAP’ and download the sample CSV file and add in the required details such as mailbox name, password, host name and port. Load the CSV file into EdbMails and verify the list mailboxes to continue.

     

   • Step 3: Select the AOL mailboxes and migrate to Office 365

     EdbMails displays all your mailboxes / folders / subfolders in the application’s left panel where you can select all of them or select only the required mail items for migration. If this is your first migration with EdbMails, it will be a full migration. On subsequent migrations to the same target from the same computer, the migration is incremental to avoid duplicates.

     After selecting the mailboxes, mail items and folders, click on the ‘Migrate to Office 365’ button to continue.

     

   • Step 4: Connect to target Office 365

     EdbMails supports both classic and modern authentication for Office 365 connection. You can choose ‘Auto’ or ‘Manual’ registration for modern authentication and select one of the methods from Mailboxes, Public folder or Archive mailbox. The application will load mailboxes automatically or you can load Office 365 mailboxes using a CSV file.

   • Step 5: Start the migration to Office 365 from AOL

     After connecting to the target server, proceed to mailbox mapping and start the migration operation. Finally, verify the migration and the count of folders, mailboxes and items with the log report.

4. Additional options and settings

   EdbMails provides include and exclude folder and filter options in the Migration interface. Click the gear icon (Settings) provided in the migration window to customize what you would like to migrate.

   • You can migrate items based on Sender Address, Date, Subject, Attachment etc.
   • You can Include and Exclude standard folders for migration such as Inbox, Sent, Drafts

   Furthermore, the right panel has additional options to migrate permissions, removing deleted source items from target folders and so on.

    Click on the link if you would like to know more about EdbMails IMAP migration tool

    Here are the step-by-step instructions to export IMAP emails to Outlook PST.

5. Post-migration tasks

   • Step 1: Update DNS records (MX record) to point to Office 365

     If you have not done this step previously, change the DNS records known as MX records to enable and receive email messages on the target Office 365 server. In addition to this setup, configure the Autodiscover record to allow Outlook to connect to the migrated mailboxes.

   • Step 2: Decommission or delete the user mailboxes on AOL server

     After you verify that you are correctly receiving emails on Office 365, you can safely decommission and disable user mailboxes on the source AOL server

   • Step 3: Create a new Outlook profile for users in the new domain

     Remove any previous instances of AOL accounts on Outlook to avoid conflicts with the new server. Configure and recreate the Outlook profile for each user in your domain if it has problems connecting to Office 365 mailboxes.