Effective ways to migrate IMAP to Office 365

Mike_26

If you are searching for effective ways to migrate the IMAP emails to Office 365 then I have an informative article for you. This article explains the detailed manual procedure that will help you to safely accomplish this task without spending any amount on professional software. However, this manual method has some limitations that are mentioned in this article. Therefore, experts have always recommended opting for a professional software solution to migrate IMAP to Office 365.

This article will introduce you to an advanced utility called MCT IMAP Migration Tool that is a reliable solution to accomplish this task. It has an interactive user interface that is compatible with both technical and non-technical users. You can try its free version to analyze and experience the advanced functionalities of this software.

Akshay_M

Steps for Migrating IMAP to Office 365
There are six steps involved in migrating other IMAP email accounts to Office 365, and performing each of these steps is crucial for flawless migration of mailboxes. The steps include:

Identifying the full name of your current email server
Creating a list of mailboxes to migrate
Connecting Office 365 to your email system
Creating a migration batch and migrating mailboxes
Routing emails directly to Office 365
Discontinuing email synchronization
Following these steps, you’ll be able to migrate your IMAP data to Office 365 account.

Step 1: Identifying the Full Name of Your Current Email Server
Office 365 requires the same source email server name for migration, so you’ll have to identify the full name of your current IMAP email server.

Open your mailbox with Outlook on the web.
Go to Settings in the toolbar, and then type “pop” in the Search all settings box.
From the result displayed, select POP and IMAP.
The IMAP server name will be listed in the IMAP setting section.
IMAP server name
Step 2: Creating a List of Mailboxes to Migrate
Before migrating the mailboxes to Office 365, you need access to your IMAP user mailboxes. For this, create a list of mailboxes when you know the password of user mailboxes. This information can be collected from your source email system. If you don’t know the user passwords, you can reset the passwords to new passwords.
Reset the password

Step 3: Connecting Office 365 to Your Email System
To connect with the source email system, Office 365 uses a migration endpoint. You can create the migration endpoint with the following steps:

Go to Exchange Admin Center and click Recipients.
Select Migration >> More …>> Migration endpoints.
Select migration endpoint
To create a new migration endpoint, click the New + icon.
The Select the migration endpoint type page will appear on the screen, click IMAP.
Enter the following details to IMAP migration configuration page:
IMAP Server name
Leave rest information as it is and click Next
The migration services will test the connection to the email server, and if it works, the Enter general information page will appear on the screen.
On this page, type the Migration endpoint name. Leave the other boxes completely blank and click New to create the migration endpoint.
The new migration endpoint will be created after that.

Step 4: Creating a Migration Batch and Migrating Mailboxes
You need to create a migration batch for bulk migration of emails to Office 365 mailboxes. This migration batch will consist of the mailboxes that you listed in the migration file earlier. Follow the below steps to create a migration batch.

Go to Exchange Admin Center and click Recipients >> Migration.
Click New + >> Migrate to Exchange Online.
Migrate to Exchange online
Select IMAP migration and click Next.
The Select the user page will appear on the screen, click Browse to select the migration file that you created. Office 365 will run a quick check on the file to verify whether it’s accurate or not.
If the file is verified by Office 365, the number of users listed in the file will be displayed as the number of mailboxes to migrate. After file validation, click Next.
Select the mailbox to migrate
The IMAP migration configuration page will appear on the screen, click Next.
Now, select the migration endpoint that you created in step 3.
Go to Move Migration page, type the name of the migration batch, and then click Next. From here, you can also exclude the folder from the migration process by typing their name or clicking the “+” icon. After making your selection click Next.
Type the name of migration batch
The Start the batch page will appear on the screen, take the following actions:
Click Browse for sending a copy of migration reports to other users. The migration report can also be accessed from the properties page of the migration batch.
Select Automatically start the batch. The migration process will begin when you save the migration batch. The status of the migration batch will change to Syncing from Created.
Syncing
You can verify the status of the task in the Exchange Admin Center.

Step 5: Directly Route Your Email to Office 365
Every email system uses a DNS record (called MX record), to identify the delivery address for emails. During the email migration process, the MX record is left pointing toward the source email system. After the successful migration to Office 365, you’ll have to point MX record at Office 365. It will ensure that all the emails are delivered to your Office 365 mailboxes.
Generally, it takes around 72 hours for the email systems to recognize the changed MX record. Once it is complete, you can move to the next task to stop email synchronization, but make sure you wait at least 72 hours before moving to the next step.

Step 6: Discontinuing Email Synchronization
After changing the MX records, you’ll have to verify that all your emails are being routed to Office 365, and then only you’ll be able to delete the migration batch. Doing so will discontinue the synchronization between your source email system and Office 365. But before that, here are a few things that you need to check:

Your users are using Office 365 for email. After deleting the migration batch, the emails sent to your source email system aren’t copied to Office 365.
Before deleting the migration batch, let it run for at least 72 hours. It will give enough time for synchronization between your source email system and Office 365 mailboxes.
After deleting the migration batch, the migration service will clear the records related to the migration batch and eliminates it from the migration dashboard.
Deleting a Migration Batch
You can easily remove a migration batch from the Exchange Admin Center.

Visit the Exchange Admin Center and go to Recipients and then select Migration.
From the migration dashboard, click Delete for the selective batch.
Delete the selective batch

You can confirm the deletion of migration batch by again visiting the Recipients in Exchange Admin Center.

shivam177

Recently, I found an informative article that explains the best ways to migrate IMAP to Office 365. This article will provide you with an effective and secure manual method that will help you step by step in migrating your IMAP emails to Office 365 effortlessly.

However, if you face any difficulty while performing the manual method then you can also opt for the direct approach i.e using IMAP Mail Backup Tool. The interface of this software is more convenient so that every user can perform it effectively. Moreover, you can also migrate your emails to different email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Thunderbird, Office 365, etc. You can try its free demo version to examine its performance.