OST to Office 365 migration

Before you import OST to Office 365, prepare the target Office 365 server as described in the following section.

• Ensure that you meet the network and bandwidth requirements for the migration. See network and migration planning, performance factors and best practices for Office 365 migration.
• Prepare your target Office 365 tenant. See tenant roadmap for Microsoft 365.
• Purchase an Office 365 licensing plan specific to your needs. You can also sign up for a 30 day free trial and decide to go with a suitable one later. Compare Office 365 business plans and Compare Office 365 enterprise plans
• Create mailboxes for your users in your organization and assign suitable licenses to them.

   Add users and assign licenses to Office 365 users

   Add several users at the same time to Office 365

   Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts

• If you plan to import Public folders from the OST file into Office 365, ensure that you create and configure the Public folder mailboxes on the target server.

   Create Office 365 Public folder and assign mailbox user

• If you plan to migrate In-Place archives to Office 365, enable the archive mailbox on the target server. See steps to enable online archive in Office 365
• If you have a custom email domain from the source to which you want to receive emails after the migration, you must add and verify the custom domain on Office 365.

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

• Configure Office 365 to send and receive large messages

   Follow the steps to increase the message size on Office 365 to 150MB.

• • Step 1: Download and install EdbMails software

    • Download and install the EdbMails application on your computer.

      

    • See a detailed list of EdbMails system requirements for OST file conversion
    • Launch the EdbMails application.
    • Enter the email address & password and click ‘Login’ or ‘Start Your Free Trial’.

      

    • Select ‘OST Recovery and Migration’

      

    • Select ‘OST to Office 365’.

      

    • To begin a fresh migration, select ‘Start a new migration operation.’ If you want to continue the previous migration, select ‘Choose a migration from previous operations’.

      

    • Enter the job name for the export operation for future identification and click Continue to proceed.

      

  • Step 2: Select the offline OST files

    • Click ‘Browse for OST file'.

      

    • Select the offline OST file from your computer drive, then click the ‘Next’ button to continue. You can also share the OST file on a network with read and write permissions enabled.

      

  • Step 3: Preview and select the mailbox

    • EdbMails scans your OST file and recovers data in case of corruption.

      

      Once the recovery operation is complete, the entire folder structure will be displayed in the left pane. You can expand the mailbox and folders to preview the items. The preview pane allows you to view emails, contacts, folders, notes, tasks, and calendars directly within the application. It also enables you to open an OST file without Outlook. It also allows you to open an OST file without Outlook.

    • Select the required mailboxes/folders and click the ‘Next’ button.

      

      EdbMails allows you to apply the filters to customize your migration process. For instance, you can apply date filters to export the items within a certain date range.

        Date filter settings for OST to Office 365 migration

  • Step 4: Connect to target Office 365 server

    • Click the ‘Add New’ button to establish a new connection to the target Office 365 server. To use the previous connection, select it from the connection list and click the ‘Connect’ button to proceed.

      

    • Select the required connection options and click the ‘Next’ button.

      

    • Select the one of the authentication methods and click the ‘Login’ button to continue.

        Connect to Office 365 server using secure modern authentication

      

    • Authenticate on Microsoft sign-in page.

      

    • Select one of the methods to load the mailboxes. You can also load the mailboxes using a CSV file.

      

  • Step 5: Map source and target mailboxes

    • Choose the required mailbox mapping option

      

    • EdbMails automatically creates mailboxes on your target Office 365 server and assigns the necessary licensees.

       Learn more about the automatic mailbox creation process on the target Office 365 server.

    • By default, EdbMails automatically maps the mailboxes and folders between the source and the target server. You can also manually map the source mailboxes to the required target mailboxes.

      

  • Step 6: Start OST to Office 365 migration

    • Click the 'Start Migration’ button to initiate the migration process.

      

    • The migration process is in progress, and you can monitor it in the progress bar. You also have the option to pause or resume the operation at any time. Once the migration operation is completed, EdbMails will display a confirmation message.

      

    • You can verify the list of migrated folders and mailbox items with EdbMails text-based migration log report.
    • Login to your target Office 365 server and verify the migrated items.

• Step 1: Update the MX records to point to Office 365

  Update the MX records to direct incoming emails to the target Office 365 server, ensuring email delivery. Additionally, set up the Autodiscover record to enable Outlook to automatically connect to the newly migrated mailboxes.

• Step 2: Create a new Outlook profile for users in the new domain

  Configure the Outlook profile for each user in your domain if Outlook has problems connecting to Office 365 mailboxes.

For troubleshooting, visit our Knowledge Base. For more queries, refer to the Frequently Asked Questions or reach out to our support team.