Office 365

How to Migrate Public Folders to Office 365 Groups Easily?

Office 365 is a cloud-based package of services offered by Microsoft for communication and data management. It has a group platform that lets users collaborate and share resources; a feature related to public folders in Exchange.

If you want to migrate public folders to Office 365, we have a manual process right here for you. However, due to the complexity of the manual process, it requires a lot of planning to avoid any kind of fatal mistakes during implementation.

Therefore, in this article, we are also providing a simple and quick solution to migrate public folders to Office 365 groups. But before that, we need to compare public folders with O365 groups to have a better understanding of why Groups are preferred over Public Folders.

Table Of Content

• Why Move Public Folders to Office 365 Groups
• How to Migrate Groups to Office 365 Groups in Batch Mode
• Manual Method 1- Public Folders migration from Exchange to Office 365
• Manual Method 2- Export Public Folder as PST using MS Outlook
• Simplest Way to Move Public Folders to Office 365 Groups
• Final Words
• Frequently asked questions

Why Move Public Folders to Office 365 Groups? 

To put it bluntly, public folders are an old concept, while the O365 group is the latest trend. It can replace the old public folder altogether in almost all cases. Let’s see some of them:

• Email Collaboration: Groups provide a dedicated space for users to communicate and collaborate via email. It can also be set up in such a way that people from outside the organization can also share information. On the other hand, mail-enabled public folders store project-related information to be viewed by only team members.
• Documents Collaboration: Again, groups have a dedicated space that displays all files along with attachments from the Sharepoint team site. While in public folders, one must search for the files since they are not available in a single view.
• Shared Calendar: Shared calendars are provided to every group and can be altered and updated by any member of the group. Public folders use a scheduler or timetable for such tasks, but the shared calendar has more features in every aspect.
• Permissions: Users, when assigned to a group, get immediate permissions. While you have to manually do this task for every user in public folders,. This might be the reason why you need to migrate public folders to Office 365. 
• Accessibility on both mobile & web: Groups provides mobile access via Outlook mobile apps and has a richer set of features on the web. While public folders are not available for mobile and have limited web functionality,.
• Other extra advantages: Office 365 Suite is a whole package of applications. When a group is created, various extra services, such as Sharepoint, a planner, etc., are also provided to the users. Public folders have no such concept.

Hence, you can say that Office 365 Groups are quite convenient to work with. The feature-rich cloud environment provides a much safer and more flexible platform to operate on.

Now let’s talk about how you can migrate public folders to Microsoft 365 in bulk. Below are the methods that are described in the section below. 

How to Migrate Groups to Office 365 Groups in Batch Mode?

Microsoft does not provide any application for easy migration of your folders to O365 groups. So, a manual workaround for this task was discovered. You can either go for this long and tedious manual approach or use a simple tool to conveniently import public folder PST to Office 365 migration tool.

Manual Method- Public Folders migration from Exchange to Office 365

Step 1. First of all, download all the migration scripts from the Microsoft Reference Scripts page to save them on the system if you wish to run Powershell.

Step 2. Prepare for migration by checking some prerequisites for the process:

• No orphan Public Folder mail objects should be present in Active Directory,
• No duplicate Public Folder objects should be present in Active Directory,
• SMTP email address of both Active Directory public folders and Exchange objects should match

Step 3. Now generate CSV files 

Step 4. Create a public folder mailbox on Office 365

Step 5. Generate downtime request

Step 6. Start the migration process to migrate public folders to Office 365    

Step 7. Lock, finalize, test and unlock the public folder migration

Step 8. Remove the public folder database from the legacy Exchange server.

Note: For detailed instructions and prerequisite conditions to be met, please refer to Microsoft library.

Limitations:

After analyzing the detailed steps, one can easily say that these instructions are way too complex and confusing for any normal user. A bit of strong technical knowledge is a must to even understand this approach.

Furthermore, there are a lot of conditions that must be met to even initiate the process. Plus, the time factor, along with the exact execution of this list of instructions with multiple steps, is always a headache for any user.

Manual Method 2- Export Public Folder as PST using MS Outlook

• In MS Outlook, sign in and configure your account in Microsoft Outlook.
• After the account is added, go to file and then “Import & Export.”
• Then, export the Outlook Data file (.pst) that you want to migrate to Office 365 and click Next.
• Click include subfolders on the top level of public folders. Click Next
• Select the .PST file format, and click Next. Name the file and set a password (if required)

Simplest Way to Move Public Folders to Office 365 Groups

So many shortcomings are associated with the manual approach that it is no longer relevant. The only solution to this problem is to export public folder as PST and then import this PST to Cloud O365 using a third-party solution. Office 365 Import tool with its simplicity and ease of function, is the most relevant in this scenario.

There is no need to perform long, complicated steps anymore. No matter if you are accessing O365 with or without impersonation, the tool is capable of delivering perfect results in both cases. The two-way step to migrate groups to Office 365 is as follows:

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• Step 1- First, download and install the software, and then you will land at this interface. Here, you need to provide source and destination platforms for the software.
• Step 2- Now select the category from the workload selection bar and apply the date range filter option.
• Step 3- Now provide the PST folder to the software in the import folder path, and then validate.
• Step 4- Allow the necessary permissions to the software, without which software can’t proceed,
• Step 5- Now, provide the email account & application ID of Microsoft 365 for public folder migration from Exchange to Office 365. Afterthat, validate.
• Step 6- On the user screen, you can fetch, import, and download templates to add users from the source account.
• Step 7- Lastly, tap on Start Import to migrate public folders to Office 365

Final Words

The discussed manual approach is way too complex, error-prone, and time-consuming. But you can easily overcome all these shortcomings by using the O365 Import tool. In addition, the tool can migrate more than just public folders to Office 365 groups. It provides complete PST data migration, including emails, contacts, calendars, and tasks, to O365 online.

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