Exchange to Office 365 Migration Tool – A Complete Guide

The current trend is to shift to Office 365 cloud-based services. Most businesses that use Exchange are looking for a way to move to Office 365. Exchange Server is popular. It doesn’t make it easy to migrate Exchange to Office 365. The Microsoft Exchange allows users to share information in a standard way, and the administrator allows users to access that information. Consequently, Office 365 is a way that use technology in very modern and flexible way. Exchange to Office 365 migration can be easier if you have a well-thought-out plan.

Therefore, this guide will talk about how we can migrate Exchange to Office 365. There will be ways to migrate public folders to Office 365. Let’s start by figuring out why it’s a good idea to switch to Office 365.

Why migrate to Office 365?

I’ll discuss some standard benefits of Exchange to Office 365 migration below. There could be other reasons or advantages.

• You don’t have to worry about updating applications of Office 365. Microsoft takes care of all of that and does it perfectly. You don’t need to worry about a server going down or something similar.
• ou no longer have to take care of anything.  Cloud-based services are less expensive compared to others. There is just a need to get a subscription to Office 365. You will get all the functions, suggestions for setting them up, and many other functions. It tends to encourage the user to migrate Exchange to Office 365.
• Users’ data is kept safe by Office 365 services. Therefore, there is no need to worry about their data being stolen or lost, it assures data is safe from any technical problems, bugs, or other tragedies.
• Office 365 lets you access its services in various ways without having to set up infrastructure. All you need is a device that can connect to the internet and has been supported. Cloud-based services are easy to use and can be accessed from anywhere at any time.
• Exchange to Office 365 migration saves more email accounts for new users. You don’t have to deal with hardware providers or set up additional support to get more storage space.

Here are the potential advantages of Office 365. Moving mailboxes from Exchange to cloud-based services is a big job. In the next section, you’ll find a few reasonable ways to migrate Exchange to Office 365. 

Exchange-to-Office 365 migration methods:

 Two techniques exist to help in migrating from Exchange to Office 365. Both of them are described below.

1. Manual methods:

There are several methods to perform Exchange to Office 365 migration manually.

• Cutover migration:

The cutover migration method only works with versions of Exchange Server 2003 or later. If your company’s on-premises Exchange only has 2,000 mailboxes, you can use this method. This method lets you move your information from Exchange Online or migrate public folders to office 365.

• Staged migration:

Here’s a way to Migrate Exchange to Office 365 in stages. It works for a medium-sized company with 2,000 mailboxes to migrate. There are several steps in the Staged for Exchange to Office 365 migration. It splits each stage’s contents into small batches at a certain time.

• Hybrid deployment:

For your on-premises Exchange plan, a hybrid deployment is an option. You can move in and out of Exchange Online mailboxes with the help of hybrid deployments. It gives services access to the information that can move between on-premises and cloud deployments. Therefore, you can be sure that it will work well when you use it.

• IMAP Office 365 migration:

IMAP migration methods can help you move only email messages from certain versions of the Exchange Server to the cloud. This process lets you move emails from Exchange 2000 and the most recent version. It can make it easier to move user mailbox information from IMAP to Office 365. This method doesn’t work to migrate public folders to Office 365 completely.

Export mailboxes from Exchange to PST:

It is one of the native ways you can manually migrate Exchange to Office 365. If your business is in Exchange Server 2007 or an earlier version, you can access the Export Mailbox command or new tools.

And Exchange server 2010 and the latest version supports the PowerShell command’s new mailbox export call.

Consequently, once you export the mailboxes to PST, you can then import them to your Office 365 account.

Note: With these methods, the migration will take time which is hard to predict. To move the database, the administrator needs a powerful command line. There is only one version of Exchange that can do a manual migration.

2. Professional method:

Here is an excellent solution: Shoviv Exchange to Office 365 migration software. There are no challenges and flaws to using this solution. This software is simple and easy to use. It makes it possible to move as many mailboxes as you want from the source server. There is also an incremental option to migrate mailboxes in interruption with any duplication.

Its ability to map folders and email translation makes it a more attractive and useful solution.  Therefore, you can use migrate public folders to Office 365.

Finishing lines:

This reference indicates manual approaches work for certain Exchange versions or mailboxes. It’s not a good idea to move from Exchange to Office 365 manually. Use a Professional tool as mentioned above to migrate Exchange to Office 365. This tool allows a free demo version to analyze the first 50 directories per folder.