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Office 365 to Office 365 migration

Office 365 to Office 365 migration is often necessary for organizational changes such as mergers, acquisitions, or restructuring. This process involves handling challenges like maintaining data consistency, avoiding service interruptions, and managing various types of data, including mailboxes, public folders, shared mailboxes, and archive mailboxes. EdbMails Office 365 Migration software is designed to address these requirements with its specialized features.

EdbMails simplifies the migration with an intuitive interface, eliminating the need for complex PowerShell commands. The software uses modern authentication protocols to connect to Office 365 and ensures secure migration operation. It automatically creates mailboxes on the target server and assigns licenses. Also, it automatically maps source mailboxes with the target mailboxes. EdbMails features Incremental migration that ensures migration of only new or modified source data during subsequent migration runs, preventing duplication of items on target servers and optimizing network performance. EdbMails supports concurrent migration of multiple mailboxes, allowing for faster and more efficient data transfer. The software maintains the exact folder structure and migrates everything from the source servers, including emails, calendars, contacts, journals, permissions etc.

Office 365 to Office 365 Migration guide

This step-by-step guide provides clear instructions for using EdbMails for Office 365 to Office 365 migration. It covers all stages of the migration, from initial setup and configuration to execution and result verification, enabling you to effectively use EdbMails features for a smooth and accurate migration.

Planning and preparation
Before you migrate from Office 365, it's important to take the time to plan and prepare. This will help ensure that your migration goes as smoothly as possible and that you don't encounter any unexpected issues along the way.
- Step 1: Evaluate your current infrastructure
  The first step in any Office 365 migration is to evaluate your current infrastructure. This includes assessing your hardware, software, and network, as well as identifying any potential compatibility issues.
- Step 2: Choose the right migration method
  There are several ways to migrate to Office 365, including cutover migration, staged migration, hybrid migration and IMAP to Office 365 migration. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it's important to choose the one that's right for your organization.
- Step 3: Determine your migration scope
  After you've chosen your migration method, you'll need to determine your migration scope. This includes deciding which data you want to migrate, as well as identifying any data that may need to be archived or deleted.
- Step 4: Create an Office 365 migration plan
  With your migration scope in mind, you can now create an Exchange online tenant to tenant migration plan. This plan should outline the steps you'll need to take to migrate your data and applications to Office 365, as well as any potential roadblocks you may encounter along the way.
Office 365 to Office 365 migration prerequisites
On the source Office 365 server:
1. Ensure that you have a global admin account with a mailbox for Auto Registration of EdbMails application on your Entra ID (Azure Active Directory). However, you can use either a global admin account or any user account with full access rights in the Manual Registration method.
2. Ensure that your network and bandwidth meet the requirements for the migration.
  Refer to the following links for network and migration planning, performance factors and best practices.
3. To migrate source Public folders, ensure that you assign the necessary admin permissions.
4. To migrate In-Place archives, make sure that the archive mailbox is enabled. See the steps to enable online archive in Office 365.
5. If the standard folders (such as Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts) in your source mailboxes are set up in a different language, for example, if your source Inbox folder is named ‘Boîte de réception’ in French, the direct migration may not automatically map it to the ‘Inbox’ folder on the target server. To ensure that the folder with the French name is correctly mapped to the corresponding folder on the target server, refer to this link.
On the target Office 365 server:
1. Prepare your target Office 365 Tenant. See Tenant roadmap for Microsoft 365.
2. EdbMails automatically creates Office 365 mailboxes and assigns licenses on target servers. However,if you want to manually create mailboxes for your organization's users and assign the appropriate licenses to them navigate through the below links.
3. Explore the different Office 365 licensing plans to find one that best suits your needs. You can start with a 30-day free trial and later choose a plan that aligns with your requirements. Utilize available resources to compare various Office 365 business and enterprise plans before making a decision. Compare Office 365 business plans and compare Office 365 enterprise plans.
4. If you intend to migrate source public folders to public folders on Office 365, ensure that you create and configure the corresponding public folders on the target server.
5. To connect to In-Place Archives on the target server, ensure that the archive mailbox is enabled. See the steps for enabling online Archive in Office 365.
6. Use a global administrator account with a mailbox for Automatic Registration of EdbMails on Entra ID (Azure Active Directory).
7. If you have a custom email domain from the source that you want to use for receiving emails after the migration, you must add and verify the custom domain in Office 365.
  Steps to add a custom domain to Office 365 and steps to add DNS records to connect your domain.
8. If you are using Active Directory Federation Services, you must configure a new domain on the target tenant for ADFS.
9. Configure Office 365 to send and receive large messages
  Follow the steps to increase the message size on Office 365 to 150MB.
Office 365 to Office 365 migration using EdbMails
EdbMails Office 365 migrator simplifies the migration process, providing a hassle-free experience. The software smoothly transfers all Office 365 mailbox data including emails, contacts, calendars, appointments, tasks, journals, public folders, archive mailboxes, and Office 365 groups—from one account to another, ensuring a complete transfer of your data.
- Step 1: Download and Install EdbMails application
  - Download and install EdbMails on your computer.
  - Double click the EdbMails setup (EdbMailsSetup.exe) to install the application.
  - Follow the instructions that appear to complete the installation.
    See EdbMails system requirements for Office 365 migration.
- Step 2: Select Office 365 migration option
  - Click 'Login' or 'Start Your Free Trial' to access the application
  - Select the option ‘Office 365 migration’ and proceed
- Step 3: Connect to source Office 365 server
  - In the ‘Connect to Office 365 (Source)’ window, select the required method for the secure OAuth based modern authentication. The default ‘Auto Registration’ method requires Global admin access. You can use either a Global admin account or any user account with full access rights in the Manual Registration method.
  - Choose the required connection method.
  - Authenticate on the Microsoft sign-in page with the global admin account having a mailbox.
  - Accept the required permissions for the application to execute the migration operation.
  - If you have already established an Office 365 connection with EdbMails, the mailboxes list will be saved. You can use the same list. If you are establishing a new connection, click the ‘No’ button to get the mailbox loading options.
  - EdbMails Automatically loads mailboxes from your source Office 365 server. If you are unable to list the required mailboxes using the automatic mailbox loading option you can use the CSV file to load the mailboxes. You can also choose the option to load the mailboxes from a previously stored list.
- Step 4 : Select the mailboxes and connect to the target server
  - Select the mailboxes and folders from the left pane of the main migration window.
  - Click ‘Migrate to Office 365’ to set up the connection with the target server.
- Step 5: Connect to target Office 365 server
  Connect to your target Office 365 server using the same method as you used for the source server. Then, select the required migration operation and choose the option to load the mailboxes.
- Step 6: Map source and target mailboxes
  In the mapping window, You will have the following options:
  - Automatically create mailboxes on the target server and map source mailboxes accordingly.
  - I have necessary mailboxes on my target server and need to map source mailboxes to them.
  - Use previously saved migration mappings.
  - Load Source and Target mailbox mapping using CSV file.
  EdbMails automatically creates mailboxes on your target server and assigns the required licenses.
  Click here to know more about automatic mailbox creation.
  Click here to know about user-defined mailboxes / folders mapping.
  After successfully creating mailboxes on your target server, EdbMails automatically maps mailboxes and folders between source and target tenants, which is particularly beneficial for large-scale migrations. Alternatively, you have the flexibility to manually map source folders and subfolders to specific target locations as needed.
- Step 7: Start Office 365 to Office 365 migration
  After completing the mailbox mapping, click the ‘Continue’ button and enter the job name and proceed
  Now, the migration is initiated . EdbMails will notify you upon migration completion, and you can verify the details with the log report. You can also pause or resume the migration if necessary.
Office 365 Post-migration Activities
- Step 1: Update the MX records to point to Office 365
  Start by adding your current domain to Office 365. If you haven't updated DNS records before, change the MX records to ensure emails can flow into Office 365 and be received properly. Also, configure the Autodiscover record to enable Outlook to connect easily to the migrated mailboxes.
- Step 2: Clear the Auto-Complete list in Outlook
  See manage suggested recipients with Auto-Complete.
- Step 3: Create a new Outlook profile after migration
  - Ensure each user has the latest Outlook version installed to avoid compatibility issues.
  - Set up Outlook profiles for each user in your domain if they experience connectivity problems with Office 365 mailboxes.
  - Configure Outlook with the new server settings, including server address, username, and password.
  - Test email functionality to confirm that users can send and receive emails successfully.
- Step 4: Remove the old Office 365 subscription plan
  Once the migration is complete and you have confirmed the integrity of the migrated mailbox data, proceed to remove the Office 365 subscription plan from the source tenant, along with any associated domains.