Things to Consider while Importing PST Data into Office 365

Microsoft 365, formerly known as Office 365, is a cloud-based subscription service that provides users access to a variety of Microsoft Office products and services. These include Microsoft Office suite of products, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online.

Exchange Online is a hosted email service that is included as part of Microsoft 365 (M365). It provides users with access to their emails, contacts, and calendar items from any web browser. If you are planning to migrate the users from your current email server to Office 365, you can use different methods, such as:

• Remote Move Migration—for migrating mailboxes from Exchange 2010 or later versions.
• Staged Migration—for migrating mailboxes from Exchange 2003 and 2007 only.
• Cutover Migration—for migrating mailboxes from Exchange 2003 and later versions.
• Cross Tenant Migration—for migrating mailboxes from one Exchange Online (M365) to another Exchange Online organization.
• Google Workspace (Gmail) Migration—for migrating mailboxes from Google Workspace to Office 365 (Exchange Online).
• IMAP Migration—for migrating mailboxes from any source email system that supports IMAP to Office 365.

However, if your organization uses a different mail server or mail server that does not support the IMAP, you can migrate mailboxes from your current email system to Office 365 by using the PST upload and import method.

In this article, we have discussed the limitations and issues that you may encounter while importing PST data into Office 365.

Things to Consider before Importing PST Data into Office 365

Importing PST into Office 365 is one of the best ways to migrate mailboxes from an unsupported on-premises mailbox server. However, there are a few points and caveats that you must consider before proceeding.

• To import PST into Office 365, you must have a Microsoft 365 subscription.
• You need to set up the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 tenant, create user accounts, and assign licenses to each user to activate the mailbox. If the license is not assigned to the user accounts, their mailbox remains inactive.
• Each user must have a valid Office 365 email account.
• To import PST into Office 365, you must be a global administrator or have customs administrator role for the Office 365 organization.
• There is a limitation on the maximum number of PST files that can be imported.
• PST files larger than 20 GB are not supported. You must split large PST files before uploading to Azure Blob storage.
• It is not possible to import PST data into Office 365 public folders and shared mailboxes.
• The Office 365 mailbox must have sufficient space to store or hold the data.
• While importing PST data into Office 365, the process may get interrupted due to network issues, such as low bandwidth, etc.
• The data is not imported in the same order as it is in the PST file.
• The data is not imported in its original format.
• In drive shipping, the disk may cross borders which can raise data security compliance issues.
• It can take at least 7-10 days to ship and upload PST files to Azure storage before you can start importing the PST files.

How to Overcome the Challenges and Quickly Import PST Files into Office 365?

To ensure quick PST import into Office 365 tenant (user mailboxes) and overcome the limitations of manual PST import methods (Network Upload and Drive Shipping), you can choose an Outlook PST to Office 365 migrator tool. While choosing a reliable software for PST to Office 365 migration, consider the following factors:

• Choose reliable and trustworthy software that can perform the task smoothly and without any data loss.
• Make sure the software is compatible with your system and supports all the latest versions of Microsoft Outlook and Office 365.
• The software should have a user-friendly interface so that even a non-technical person can use it without any hassle.

Conclusion

The article discusses the limitations and caveats that you may encounter while importing PST files into Office 365 using the manual methods—Drive Shipping and Network Upload. To avoid downtime, overcome the limitations of manual methods, and quickly import PST data into Office 365, you can use a specialized PST to Office 365 migration tool. Stellar Migrator for Outlook is one such reliable and trustworthy PST to Office 365 migrator tool that you can use to import single or multiple PST files into the user mailboxes on Office 365 tenant.