Export Mailbox from Office 365 to PST Using O365 PST Export Tool

Exporting mailbox to PST from Exchange Online Office 365 turns out to be a very easy task with the help of New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet. However, when it comes to export Office 365 mailbox to PST file format, this option cannot be deployed. This is because the New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet requires a UNC path, which a mail server needs to fetch to proceed with the migration. Since, the mail servers of Office 365 are located in Microsoft’s data center, the UNC path would not be supplied by them.

Therefore, in this blog we will discuss about Office 365 Email Backup Solution that will export mailbox from Office 365 to PST format by granting full access permission to the Office 365 mailbox as an administrator. The entire procedure will be performed in the back-end using PowerShell.

Assumptions

To make it more clear for the users and to avoid any confusion regarding the names of the mailbox, Office 365 account and so on, we have mentioned the names of the various accounts.
Name of mailbox that has to be exported: aria-old@ambertech.com
Account name in Outlook where the mailbox will be exported: new@ambertech.com
Account with all the admin rights of Office 365: exch_admin@ambertech.com

Procedure to Export Office 365 Mailbox to PST

1. Establish Connection With Exchange Server The first step is to establish a connection to the Exchange Server with the help of PowerShell scripts:
   
   
2. Granting Access to Office 365 Mailbox 
   
3. Open Outlook as new@ambertech.com and keep in mind that the aria-old@ambertech.com mailbox is displayed on left-hand side in the mailbox list. This might take some time.
4. Ensure that Outlook is configured for downloading all the mails and not just the caching emails.
   To do this follow the below mentioned steps:
   • Open Outlook.
   • Click on File option and select Account Settings option.
   • Select your account and click on Change option.
   • Make sure that the Use Cached Exchange Mode option has been enabled.
   • Move the Mail to keep offline slider and point it to All option.
   • Select Send/Receive option to keep all the folders updated.
5. Now export the aria-old@ambertech.com mailbox as a PST file with the help of Import/Export wizard in Outlook. To do this, follow the below-mentioned steps:
   • Click on the File option.
   • Select Open & Export option and from the drop-down menu, select Import/Export option.
   • Click on Export To A File option and click on Next.
   • Select Outlook data file (.pst) option and click on Next.
   • Browse to the list of folders and select ‘aria-old account’ and click on Next.
   • Keep in mind to check the Include subfolders box.
   • Select a file name to save the mailbox on click on Finish.
6. Once the export process is finished, remove the permissions that were assigned using PowerShell. 
   
7. Close the PowerShell session. 
   

Alternate Solution

The above-mentioned solution is very time consuming and since it involves PowerShell, the users who are not well acquainted with it, might find it difficult. Therefore, as an alternative, the users can deploy third-party solutions like Office 365 Backup. The software creates a local backup of the entire data and export mailbox from Office 365 to PST. It can easily export Office 365 calendar to Outlook without making any changes to it. The software is a perfect solution to export Office 365 mailbox to PST file.