Short Abstract: Many of you might be saving important PST files locally for accessing them offline. However, PST files are highly fragile & can easily get corrupted if left on-premise for a long period of time. Hence, it’s time to think about the safety of your sensitive documents and consider performing Outlook to Office 365 migration as soon as possible.

For the past couple of years, many organizations have switched to the latest cloud platform, Office 365, for its highly collaborative features. However, some companies continue using the Outlook email service.

If you are one of them, then you should start thinking about migrating to the cloud. Since, pst is an important file format, many hackers keep their eye on these files to misuse the data against the users.

So, it’s better to transfer your on-premise pst files to the reliable Office 365 platform.

Why You Should Import PST File to Exchange Online?

There are various limitations of a standalone service. Hence, moving all the important pst files to Office 365 is the best option.

First of all, one of the major concerns of any organization is the security of its sensitive data. So, with the latest update of the security feature in Office 365, data is more secured in this cloud platform than on-premise. Hence, the best choice is to migrate pst file to Office 365.

Also, you can easily access your data from anywhere and on any device you want through Office 365 interface. So, you don’t have to depend on your office device to access your important emails.

Besides you can get a large storage area account to your Office 365 business plan.

However, knowing the right way to move your files to the cloud can really save the day.

What Are The Ways to Perform Outlook to Office 365 Migration?

Well, you can execute the migration both manually and automatically. Many experts prefer the automated approach for various reasons. We’ll discuss it shortly.

To talk about the manual approaches, you can use either one of the below three methods.

1. Import/Export Wizard
2. Network Upload Method
3. Through Drive Shipping

The above methods are supported by Microsoft, however, these approaches come with various downsides. That’s why IT admins prefer to use the Most Secured Office 365 Import Tool for smoothly migrating their PST files. 

Before discussing the automated approach(which uses the software), let’s have a look at the limitations of the manual ways.

Know The Challenges Involved in Manual Ways to Import PST File to Office 365

Let’s first discuss the import/export wizard. To carry out this process, you need to follow the below steps.

• Open MS Outlook on the desktop and click on File to Add Account.
• Then, go to the File tab, and select Open & Export>> Import/Export.
• In the Import Export Wizard window, do as follows
• Import from another program or file then hit Next
• After that, choose Outlook Data File (.pst) and press Next
• Next, click on the Browse button and select the PST file you want to import. Then, choose the desired radio button & hit Next.
• For importing the complete file, select the root file & mark the Include subfolders checkbox. Then, select the ‘Import items into the same folder’ radio button and add your office 365 account id. At last, click Finish 

Though it seems easy to conduct, in reality, the configuration of Outlook is very lengthy. 

Now, let’s come to the Network Upload method. This is a highly technical approach as it uses PowerShell Scripting language in order to perform Outlook to Office 365 migration. 

Since it requires expertise in the programming language, you should be very careful while executing the process. Cause one single mistake and you will lose your entire data. Frankly speaking, even many IT admins avoid this method to be on the safer side.

Last but not least, in the Drive Shipping method, you need to manually copy the Outlook PST files on a hard drive and forward it to Microsoft. After validating the files, the Microsoft representative will move the data to the MS cloud.

The major downside of this method is that you never know how much time it’s gonna take to successfully migrate your pst files to Office 365. 

Besides the tech giant charges $2/GB of data. So, if you have data to be imported in terms of TBs then you can do the aftermath. It’s not cost-effective.

This is why many experts go for the automated approach which negates all the challenges involved in the manual ways.

Efficiently Import PST File to Office 365 Using The Trustworthy Software

In just 5 simple steps you can easily migrate ‘n’ numbers of PST files to Office 365. Let’s go through the working steps.

1. Download and launch the import tool from the given link. Then, enter the credentials.

[Note: If you want to import pst files to multiple accounts simultaneously, then tick the ‘Is Office 365 Admin’ checkbox present at the top left corner & provide Admin details.]

2. Then, to perform Outlook to Office 365 migration, select any 1 from these 3 options: Add File, Add Folder, Add CSV

3. Next, map the PST files with their destination user ids to carry out Outlook to Office 365 migration.

4. Then, select the Categories i.e. email, calendar, tasks, etc in order to perform Outlook to Office 365 migration. Also, you can apply date filters for importing selected pst files.

5. After ticking all the desired checkboxes, click on the ‘Import’ button to carry on with the process.

Conclusion

It is always advisable to keep your data safe and adopt the latest technology. Outlook to Office 365 migration is one of them. Because you never know when will there be a malware attack. So, if you have left your pst files unprotected on-premise then use the tool now and safe-keep your data from unfortunate events.

Also Read: Get to know the latest tech updates here.