There are few customers with me who ask for a solution to perform bulk exporting from one Exchange Online account to another. They told me that they are having many user mailboxes with them, which they want to migrate. Delivering 100% efforts in finding a workaround for the same, I was unable to do this. So, is anyone available here who can provide me a simple and easy approach to perform Office 365 tenant to tenant migration?
Not only this but, there are several MS Office 365 account users who put their queries like this either on technical forums or social media sites. Therefore, here we came with a complete tutorial for moving mailboxes from one O365 account to another.
Also, read: MBOX Convertor: Convert MBOX to PST, MSG, EML, NSF & Office 365 Account
Transfer O365 Tenant to Tenant with Manual Solution
The approach does not involve the use of third-party software to complete its task. All that is needed is devoting time (in days) to move Office 365 tenant data to another. It is strongly recommended to readers that they should attempt the task only if they are having expertise level knowledge of Exchange online account. The person who is executing these steps should be an administrator having permission to access all user accounts. Hope that you are clear with all the suggestions before implementing the procedure to migrate Office 365 tenant to tenant. So let’s begin!
Prerequisites: Finish Them for Successful Migration
- Considerations for Client Side
- For MS Lync Clients: When you are completed with merging procedure, add complete address book
- For Outlook 2010 and 2007 Users: Enable the auto-discover feature and regenerate the OST file
- For Outlook 2013 and 2016 Users: If the source or target O365 tenant is configured in MS Outlook then, remove them
- Acquire the Account License & Permissions: It is compulsory to acquire data migration permissions to move mailboxes from one O365 account to another:
- The target account holder needs to increase license permissions of O365 account. It is so because we are adding data of source Exchange online account to the target one, which should be having enough space to tackle this data.
- Create all Admins in a primary and targeted domain of Microsoft Office 365 tenant
- Give Migration Notice to Other Users: The administrator should information all his / her account users that he/she is attempting O365 to O365 migration tasks.
- Create interaction plan and combine data from 2 Exchange Online account, which results in present services of the subscribed plan.
- All mailboxes nickname can be removed when migration initiates in actual
Migration Step #1: Start Planning Before 3 Days
- Prepare Primary and Aimed Accounts: Follow below-mentioned instructions to make changes in processing accounts:
- Completely ensure that targeted tenant is for the source Office 365 domain.
- Append the source account to destination Exchange online account. Develop a TXT record when you are finished with this.
- You need to devote your 72 hours to permit the DNS record for exhibiting the circulation.
Note: Check that the source and targeted tenant are not in use by some another application.
O365 Tenant to Tenant Platform Setup
- Create a list of all the user’s mailboxes, which are to be transferred.
- Map source and targeted tenant mailboxes, if you want to include them.
Preparation of Source O365 Account
- Remove the source email id of Office 365 tenant where you have configured it.
- Reset all the website URLs to initial point, if you are done with account configuring.
- Remove MS Lync licensing through the help of Lync admin portal.
- Make a setting where you have entered default email id of the mailboxes of source account. When you are completed with all this, reset all the email ids on rooms, resource, and distribution lists to the initial point.
Preparation of Targeted O365 Account
- If you are using AD FS then, open the target O365 account and create new domain within it.
- Grant all licenses and permissions required for migration to the new account.
- Make the primary account as the basic mailing address.
- If you are not using AD FS or password sync feature then, you have to mention the password of every mailbox in account domain.
- Examine the mail flow for testing the account work under different environment.
Migration Step #2: Change Office 365 Passwords in Bulk
- Open an Excel sheet and create CSV file with the name ‘password.csv’.
- In current Excel file, generate two columns i.e., upn and password.
- Fill up all the account credentials in current sheet for continuing with the migration of Office 365 tenant to tenant.
- Open Microsoft Exchange PowerShell window and run following script:
Migration Step #3: Step to Copy the Messages
Run the following script of PowerShell to begin copying of messages from basic domain to particular proxy addresses in CSV file:
Migration Step #4: Create a Room Mailbox for O365 Tenant
Execute following script in PowerShell window to migrate Office 365 tenant to tenant with the manual workaround:
Migration Step #5: Remove All Secondary Addresses From Mailboxes
Type and run following PowerShell script to move mailboxes from one Office 365 tenant to another:
Drawbacks of Manual Method
There is the bundle of risks associated with the manual approach to transfer data from one Office 365 tenant to tenant another. Few challenges are listed below:
- Affects the Ongoing Business Growth: More than a week might get consumed in the completion of data migration with the manual approach. This states that end users will not be able to work properly with their account, which results in loss of business because of work discontinuity.
- No Guarantee of Data Integrity: There is not even a single guarantee of the fact that data will be kept intact in this manual procedure. Chances are there where mailboxes items may get changed because of extracting data from source O365 account and dropping it into targeted one.
Transfer Office 365 Tenant to Tenant With Automated Solution
The approach comprises of an automated software i.e., Office 365 to Office 365 migration software. It is just a few clicks solution by which users can transfer their mailboxes from one Exchange online account to the newer or existing ones. The application is workable by the administrator as well as normal account user to attempt the migration. The thing that makes this solution unique is that it provides impersonation feature, which in actual is found rarely.
Conclusion
The blog describes the solution to migrate Office 365 tenant to the tenant with the manual and automated procedure. However, it is quite difficult to implement the manual method because there is a bundle of scripts to be executed by this. What suites the best here is automated solution because no hard efforts are needed to attempt the cloud-to-cloud data transferring. In comparison to the manual, the automated solution consumes less time migration time.
I am working as the senior system analyst and part time tech blogger
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