Forum Discussion
simple Exchange 2007 to Office 365 migration
This is a great inquiry and is super necessary for many people right now.
The process that you're describing might be faster and easier for I.T., but is probably going to be painful for your end users, and will in the long run, likely take more time than it creates from having to help your end users (unless you have a small number of super savvy ones, which I hope is true for you!).
Everything you're looking for is in the last two links below, but I've included more for anyone who comes across this information.
Basic https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Ways-to-migrate-multiple-email-accounts-to-Office-365-0a4913fe-60fb-498f-9155-a86516418842.
Planning and https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Cutover-migration-to-Office-365-9496e93c-1e59-41a8-9bb3-6e8df0cd81b4.
Please see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2798131/how-to-migrate-mailbox-data-by-using-the-exchange-admin-center-in-offi.
And check this https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj898490(v=exchg.150).aspx.
Thanks for the reply and information - I know I am taking an unconventional approach but will the basic steps I listed work? As long as my users can access their old info via PSTs in the short term, I can deal with the data over time at a slower pace - especially during the next couple of slow weeks due to the holidays.
"Technically" yes, but per my reply, I believe this will not actually simplify your migration, and in fact will create more work in the long run.
- I agree with Hunter - the approach & steps will work, but with a little more effort, you could do a cutover migration that will achieve the desired end result (all data in the cloud) with less work required from the end users, and less opportunities for user error.
I did my migration last night and had a few minor issues. I flicked the switch to go from my on site Exchange 2007 to Office 365 and that was pretty simple. Even the DNS entries were automated via the Admin Center (which I didn't expect so a nice surprise).
I did have a problem configuring the Outlook client to talk to Office 365 but a call to Microsoft fixed me up - we connected using IMAP and it all worked. I expected I could just create a new Outlook profile and go but apparently since I was using Outlook 2010 and 2013 I had to use IMAP instead.
Then I imported my PSTs and tested - all working for my 4 users in around 5 hours. I'm still not sure why the Azure upload was taking so long but I just knew it wasn't an option for me.
All in all, it went a lot better than I expected. But of course this was a very simple migration - 4 users with around 20GB total of data.
And the help that Microsoft provided was outstanding - I know they get a lot of bad press and I've had my issues with them but I talked to two different people over the last couple of days and they were very good to deal with.
I appreciate all the input on my questions :)
