How to Backup Office 365 Email to PST: A Quick and Easy Tutorial

Summary: This article explains quick ways how to back up Office365 email to PST format. Since there are various security and personal reasons for taking backup, here, we will explore the manual way as well as an automated tool for backing up Office 365 emails in PST files for prevention.

Table of Contents,

1. Why is Office 365 Mailbox Backup Needed?
2. How to Backup Office 365 Email to PST?
3. Some of the Highlights of the Tool
4. Wrapping up?

Protecting your data from accidental deletion or any other reasons such as compliance, disaster recovery, or peace of mind is important.

A backup of data is a process of making a copy of data/mail stored in more than two locations to avoid the loss of data. Moreover, it may be used to restore the original form after a data loss.

Backing up your Office 365 email to PST can be a crucial step in protecting your important data. Whether it's for having a backup of your Office 365 email can be invaluable. In this article, we will explore how to back up Office 365 email to PST with the different ways available for the same.

However, the employees working within the organization receive several important emails throughout the day that consist of important information/data. Therefore, it is advisable to take care backup of the email to the local storage.?

Before jumping to the topic i.e. Office 365 mailbox backup, Let's go through the reasons for backup.

Why is Office 365 Mailbox Backup Needed?

There are several reasons why the backup of the data is created. Lets look at some of them.

• Connectivity Issue: In case, there is low internet speed and the connectivity fails the user can access it from their local storage or personal folder, enabling access easily.
• Cyber Attacks: If you have a backup of your data and mailbox then any cyber attack will not affect the production. Cyber attacks include ransomware, malicious activities, hacking attempts, and malware.
• Downtime: In case, there is no electricity or any downtime due to some reason, the backup of data will allow you to access your data.
• Expired Licenses: If your Office 365 subscription plan expires soon and you don't want to purchase it again, therefore, with the backups you can continue access to your data without additional charges.

In addition, there are many other reasons also where the data backup is essentially needed.

How to Backup Office 365 Email to PST?

Backup is essential to ensure data access, security, and so on. Therefore users can take a backup of Office 365 mailbox to the PST. PST (Personal Storage Table), used to store copies of messages, calendar events, and other items by Microsoft Outlook by Microsoft Outlook.

This can be done by using different ways to take the backup. These ways are as follows,

• Using Microsoft Outlook’s Import/Export feature
• Backup using the eDiscovery Tool
• Make use of PowerShell
• With the Automated Tool?

Let's explore these methods mentioned above one by one.

Way 1. Office 365 Mailbox Backup Using Import/Export

For taking the backup to personal storage you can make use of the Import Export feature available in Microsoft 365. This feature allows users to select specific folders or entire mailboxes for backup in a few simple steps.

However, to export the data from Outlook you need to follow the following steps given below.

Step 1. Log in to Outlook with your Microsoft 365 credential IDs.

Step 2. Navigate to "File" and “Open & Export."

Step 3. Click on the “Import/Export” option from there and Select "Export to a file."?

Step 4. Click "Next" and select the PST format.

Step 5. Select the email account which you want to export and then?

Step 6. Click "Next” and choose the destination to save the file.

Step 7. At last, click on the “Finish” button.

By using these steps you can easily backup or export into local device storage.

Now, moving to the second method of how to backup Office 365 email to PST.

Way 2. Backup Office 365 Email Using eDiscovery Tool

Making use of eDiscovery as a backup that allows users to export email data using content search. However, eDiscovery can be used as a backup option. If you need to access this feature, you must have admin permission and be a part of the eDiscovery Manager role.?

If you want to take a backup using eDiscovery, follow the steps mentioned,

1. Log into your Office 365 account and navigate to the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center.
2. Create a new eDiscovery case and open it.
3. Go to the "Searches" tab and click "New search".
4. Define your search query to back up emails (specify mailboxes, date ranges, keywords, etc.).
5. Click "Save & run".
6. Export the search results by clicking "Actions" > "Export results".
7. Click "Start export".
8. Go to the "Exports" tab, find the export job, and click "Download results".

Note: The downloaded data will be in PST format, which can be opened with Microsoft Outlook or archived.

Now moving to the next method of Office 365 mailbox backup.

Way 3. Backup by Making Use of PowerShell

To take the backup of the Office 365 mailbox you need to go through the following commands mentioned below with the steps.

Step 1: Establish a Connection to Microsoft Exchange Server.

Run the PowerShell command

$UserCredential = Get-Credential

Enter credentials to a wizard and run the below command.

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection        

Then run this,

Import-PSSession $Session

Step 2: Now grant access by following the command,

Add-MailboxPermission -User freshtechsupport@teamsystools.com -Identity techsupport@teams.com -AccessRights FullAccess -InheritanceType All        

Step 3: Open Outlook and make sure the mailbox is entered on the left side ane.

Step 4: Configure the Outlook Settings and then, export emails to PST using Import/Export.

Step 6: Verify Export Completion

Step 7: Remove Permissions given during exporting.

Now, let's go through with the next and reliable method of backing up Office 365 Email to PST.

Way 4. Backup Office 365 Email to PST using Automated Tool?

If you need to take a backup of the data into PST file formats easily without any data loss and downtime. Therefore, an automated tool is recommended to you. However, Backup and Restore software is one of the best stands choice for backup Office 365 data to your local system. It includes many different feature set that includes selective data export.

Wrapping up?

In this context, we will discuss about everyone can easily backup the email from Office 365 to PST. However, you choose either the manual method or the automated method.