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Dan_Snape's avatar
Dan_Snape
Bronze Contributor
Jan 18, 2018
Solved

Migrate Public folders from Office 365 to on-premises Exchange

Anyone know the process for migrating Public folders from Office 365 back on-premises to Exchange 2016? Our customer is doing a tenant to tenant migration. We will be migrating all users back to on-premises Exchange, removing the hybrid/Dir sync, creating a new Hybrid/Dir sync to the new tenant then migrating the mailboxes up to the new tenant. I've just been advised that they also have public folders, so they need to be migrated as well. I'm leaning towards using Bittitan or something similar to go directly from one tenant to the other, but I'd like to know if it's possible to move public folders back on-premises.

  • Hi Dan - I've confirmed with the Exchange folks that this is simply an snafu in the documentation. It will be updated soon.

6 Replies

  • Dan_Snape's avatar
    Dan_Snape
    Bronze Contributor

    Doing a bit more digging into this issue, I found this technet article on hybrid deployments. To quote:

    Public folders are supported in Office 365, and on-premises public folders can be migrated to Office 365. Additionally, public folders in Office 365 can be moved to the on-premises Exchange 2016 organization. Both on-premises and Office 365 users can access public folders located in either organization using Outlook on the web, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013, or Outlook 2010 SP2 or newer. Existing on-premises public folder configuration and access for on-premises mailboxes doesn’t change when you configure a hybrid deployment.

    Unfortunately I can't find anything about how to move the public folders in Office 365 to the on-premises Exchange 2016 organisation. I assume I use the same process used when moving public folder mailboxes to different mailbox databases, but in this case the different mailbox database is located on premises, but I'd like some confirmation if anyone has done this.

    • VasilMichev's avatar
      VasilMichev
      MVP

      Hm, well I've never heard about this process, and I'm not able to find any references to it outside of said article. Let me poke the Exchange folks on this...

      • VasilMichev's avatar
        VasilMichev
        MVP

        Hi Dan - I've confirmed with the Exchange folks that this is simply an snafu in the documentation. It will be updated soon.

  • There is no tool/method available for that, afaik. Unless you want to do PST export/Import.

    • Dan_Snape's avatar
      Dan_Snape
      Bronze Contributor

      Thanks Vasil. I'll see if I can find a third party tool before I have to go down the export-to-PST path.