3. Export Office 365 Shared Mailbox to PST

How to Export Office 365 Shared Mailbox to PST? A Guide to Follow

Keeping a local copy of cloud data is not a new thing now. To ensure maximum data availability, follow regulatory compliance, and overcome cyber attacks, most organizations often store their crucial data locally. This leads to the elephant in the room i.e. exporting Office 365 shared mailbox to PST.

It is a common business requirement aiming to backup, archive, or migrate mailbox data. This write-up covers a step-by-step approach to exporting Office 365 mailbox to PST files including shared and archive mailbox, ensuring maximum data security and maintaining the integrity of files and folders. By following this article Office 365 administrators can securely manage mailbox data while adhering to regulatory compliances.

Table of Contents

Why Export Office 365 Mailboxes to PST?

There are several benefits which include:

  • It helps you create a secure backup of respective mailboxes for disaster recovery.
  • By keeping a local copy of cloud data you can efficiently adhere to data retention for legal and regulatory compliance.
  • It helps you eliminate the chances of data loss due to human error or cyber attacks such as malware phishing, etc.
  • Using these backup files you can easily restore whenever needed.
  • Exporting Office 365 mailboxes to PST allows you to easily migrate these data to another tenant or platform.
  • It also helps you reduce the storage cost by archiving inactive user mailboxes locally.

How to Export Mailboxes from Office 365?

There are a few ways that you can use to perform this task, these include:

  1. Using eDiscovery in Microsoft Purview
  2. Using Microsoft Outlook
  3. Using Automated Software

Let’s discuss each of them step by step in the coming sections.

Method 1: Using eDiscovery in Microsoft Purview

One of the most common methods is to use the eDiscovery search. However, it has several limitations that make it an efficient approach for the same. Before moving to the eDiscovery steps, there are a set of prerequisites to follow. Let’s discuss the same.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure the following:

  • To initiate the eDiscovery search you must have global administrative access or eDiscovery Manager permissions in Microsoft 365.
  • Once you gained global admin access, now make sure to assign the respective necessary roles to content search and export features. Follow the below steps for same:

    Assigning eDiscovery Manager Role:

    • Step 1. Go to the Microsoft Purview portal.
    • Step 2. Navigate to Permissions > Roles.
    • Step 3.Assign the eDiscovery Manager role to your account.
  • To export mailboxes from Office 365 using eDiscovery there are a set of protocols that you need to follow such as - using the Microsoft Edge browser, setting up a network, ensuring machine requirements, email client compatibility, etc.
  • PST export requires Microsoft Outlook for desktop installed on the respective local machine.
  • Last but not least, make sure you have a stable and consistent internet connection for uninterrupted data export.

Step-by-Step Process for eDiscovery Export in Microsoft Purview

Once you have the global admin access and the eDiscovery manager role assigned, you can create a content search.

Create a Content Search

  1. Log in to the Microsoft Purview portal using a global admin account.
  2. Navigate to Content Search under eDiscovery and create a new search.
  3. Specify shared mailbox under Locations and add filters if required.
  4. Once the search completes, export the results as PST.
  5. Download the PST file using the provided link.

Export Search Results

  1. Step 1. After the search is complete, click on the search to view the results.
  2. Step 2. Select Export Results.
  3. Step 3. Choose the export format as PST, and apply the filter if required.
  4. Step 4. Download the exported PST file using the provided link.

Method 2: Exporting Office 365 Mailbox Using Microsoft Outlook

MYou can use a straightforward method for exporting shared mailbox data to PST using Microsoft Outlook for desktop.

Configure Primary Mailbox Which has Access to Shared Mailbox in Outlook

  1. Launch Microsoft Outlook on your computer.
  2. Configure the Office 365 account which has access to the respective shared mailbox in Outlook for desktop.
  3. Wait until the mailbox syncs fully before proceeding.

Export to PST

  1. Navigate to File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
  2. Select Export to a File and choose Outlook Data File (.pst).
  3. Select the shared mailbox and include subfolders.
  4. Set the destination path to export for the PST file and click Finish.

Why Manual Method is Inefficient in Exporting PST Files from Office 365?

There are several shortcomings associated with eDisocvery and Outlook that you should be aware of, which include:

  • Manual methods often involve multiple tasks such as assigning eDiscovery roles, creating content searches, and exporting data. It becomes time-consuming and lengthy especially if you have large numbers of mailboxes to export.
  • Manual methods are way too complex and require technical knowledge. Configuring the prerequisites of eDiscovery and Outlook methods is a challenging task for nontechnical users. Any misconfiguration can lead to incomplete data export or hassle.
  • Since the manual methods are not designed for bulk user mailbox data export, hence exporting multiple Office 365 mailboxes can be critical and prone to errors.
  • While dealing with large PST files, there are high chances of PST file corruption if the mailbox size exceeds the recommended limit.
  • Even after all these challenges the manual methods lack several export features such as - advanced filtering, incremental exports, or detailed reporting capabilities.

Method 3. Exporting Office 365 to PST File Using Automated Tool

You can overcome all these limitations if you choose the right approach, which is Microsoft 365 Export Tool. It is one-of-a-kind software that offers several advanced features such as - advanced filtering, incremental exports, three types of rerun exports, and detailed reporting capabilities. Let’s discuss the associated steps for the same.

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Steps

  1. Download, install, and run the utility on your computer. Choose Office 365 as the source and Outlook as the destination.
  2. Enable the required workload from the workload selection menu. Apply date filter for advanced export results.
  3. In the source tab, provide source Office 365 admin account credentials. Validate the required permissions, and click on Next.
  4. In the destination tab, set the path and location to save the resultant file. Choose the desired PST file size from the drop-down menu, and validate the required permissions, and click on Next.
  5. Add users via Fetch user, Import users, or Download Template options.
  6. Select the desired user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, or archive mailboxes and click on the start export button.

Conclusion

Shared mailboxes are one such feature offered by Microsoft which is widely and frequently used in organizations due to its features at no additional cost. However, exporting shared mailbox data locally is essential to ensure various purposes such as meeting regulatory compliances, archiving, migration, etc.

Despite its significance, Microsoft does not offer any software or direct way to perform this operation. Hence, in this article, we have discussed the most efficient yet reliable software solution to export not only the shared mailboxes but also the regular or archive mailboxes to PST files.