Office 365 is a powerful business productivity suite service offered by Microsoft. This is a tool that helps users communicate and collaborate with each other easily. Due to this Office 365 contains crucial data. Hence it is essential that we archive and store an offline copy of the data for safekeeping. In this article, we will discuss how to backup Office 365 mailbox to PST PowerShell.
We will be looking at two methods, one using PowerShell and another one using a professional tool by which you can easily do the same.
How to Backup Office 365 Mailbox to PST Using PowerShell?
You can use PowerShell to archive the data in your mailbox to a PST file. You need to have access to the admin account to do the same. Let us now look at the steps that we have to use for using PowerShell.
First, we have to establish a connection to Exchange Servers using PowerShell.
Run the following script to backup Office 365 mailbox to PST file using PowerShell
UserCredential = Get-Credential
Enter the details like the email address and the corresponding password of the Office 365 account.
After this enter and run this command
Session = New-PSSession -ConfigName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection
Once the above command is completed run the below.
Import-PSSession $Session
Once the above session of command is finished, we want to grant permission to the account to completely access the mailbox via PowerShell. To do this run the following commands where 123@example.com is the mailbox that you want to extract the PST file and 456@example.com is the email id you want to export the PST to.
Add-MailboxPermission – User 456@example.com -Identity
123@example.com -AccessRights FullAccess –
InheritanceType All
After this launch Microsoft Outlook for the new account
To complete this setup open the Outlook email client and log in using 456@example.com. Give it a few minutes for the permissions to apply, once done you should see 123@example.com on the left panel.
Now we have to configure Outlook to properly download the emails.
- Open Outlook and click on Menu>>Info Page>>Account Settings
- From the account settings select the right settings.
- From the account settings, see if “Use Cached Exchange Mode” is enabled. If not turn it on.
Exporting Mailboxes to PST using Import / Export Wizard
- Click on the file option from the top left and go to Open & Export >>Import/Export option.
- Now click on the export to a file button and click on the next option.
- After this choose Outlook Data File(.pst) and click on the next button.
- Select the 123@example.com account and also check on the option “include subfolders” and click on next.
- Finally, choose a path to save the file and provide the file with a name.
- You can also provide a password to lock the PST file, else just leave it blank.
Once the process is completed you would have backed up Office 365 mailbox to PST file.
Once the process is completed, we have to make sure that everything was done properly. Follow the steps for the same.
- Right-click on the mailbox and click on data file properties.
- Right-click on the mailbox and click on data file properties.
- Now cross-check the size of the mailbox from Outlook and the PST file that we have saved and make sure they are the same.
Removing Permissions
Now that we have successfully backed up Office 365 mailbox to PST, we have to remove all the permissions that we have granted. This can be done through PowerShell by running the following commands.
Remove-MailboxPermission -User 456@example.com -Identity
123@example.com -AccessRights FullAccess”
Once done exit PowerShell by running the command below
Remove-PSSession $Session
Limitations of Using PowerShell
- Users need to have admin privileges to backup Office 365 mailbox to PST using PowerShell.
- The user must have technical knowledge of PowerShell and on how to operate using them.
- Users must have Outlook installed on their system to save the mailbox data to PST files.
- There is a high chance that the data integrity will be changed during the process.
Professional Tool to Backup Office 365 Mailbox to PST
As we can see from the above there are a few limitations that we encounter when we are using PowerShell. BitRecover Office 365 Backup Wizard ensures all these limitations are eliminated and provides the user with a much better experience.
Steps for Automated Tool
- Open Office 365 Backup Tool on your computer and from the welcome screen check the “I am Admin” option if you want to backup any or all user’s data. But if you want to just backup the data of a specific user then you can leave it unchecked.
- Enter the credentials of your Office 365 account and click on next. Follow through with the login process.
- Then wait till the tool uploads all your mailbox data into the software.
- Now select the category of files such as email, contacts, etc. that you want to backup from Office 365 mailbox to PST.
- Select the file format as PST.
- You can also set the maximum size of a PST file to split them into multiple parts.
- In the filters tab, you can find all the filters offered by the tool. From here apply as per your need.
- Click on the backup tab and click on the change button to specify a destination for your PST file. By default, it is set to desktop.
- Once everything is set, click on the Backup button to start the backup Office 365 mailbox to PST process.
- Once everything is set, click on the Backup button to start the backup Office 365 mailbox to PST process.
- Once the process is completed the tool will automatically open the log file. You can use this to verify that the backup is done properly.
- To view the PST file, you can import it into Outlook.
Conclusion
Today we have discussed how to backup Office 365 mailbox to PST. We have looked on two different methods in this article. From the above, this is clear that using PowerShell to back up Office 365 is complex for some users. To have a hassle-free experience, we suggest using the above-given tool.
Read Also – Convert Multiple MSG Files to PST Format