Back-up tools for Office 365

This thread has been locked for new comments by a moderator, if you have a new similar issue then please start a new thread.
Iron Contributor

Started this question a while back on Yammer. What tools do you use to back-up mail and files stored in Office 365?

 

The fact that your files are back-upped inside and outside the datacenters of Microsoft only protects you against hardware and software failures on Microsofts side. It will not protect you against accidentally deleted files and mails, which is discovered after 30+ days or after the site trashbins have been emptied.

 

At least that's what I think. Anyone has an answer? My customers are typically small companies, under 10 users. Sometimes even just 1 to 3.

 

I use de SkyKick Back-up tools in my own O365 tenant. Which was an offer in the Microsoft Partner Mail recently.

180 Replies

I had a look at the Keepit site and don't see any claim that they can backup Teams content. Like everyone else, they do SharePoint (OneDrive) and Exchange.

 

We cover all of your user generated Office 365 data within:

  • Exchange Online (mails, calendar, In-Place Archive, etc.)
  • Sites (SharePoint)
  • OneDrive

There's no mention of Planner, Staffhub, Yammer, Sway, etc. either...

 

I'm not blaming Keepit or any other backup vendor for the gaps they have in coverage because Microsoft has to deliver suitable APIs to allow access to the data in the various services used by Teams, Groups, etc. But you should be aware that not all your data is covered by current solutions.

 

Hi Tony,

 

A backup is not a backup until restored as the old saying goes, so...

 

To test I just restored a power point document from a Teams Files section, it came back in a few minutes. I also note that Keepit had a backup of Team conversations. I downloaded it, but could not open it, likely a format that is not on my PC and I did not want to restore it as the team is in use.

 

You are right though the API's from Microsoft needs to be better.

 

KR

Lasse

Absolutely right. A backup is useless unless you can restore content.

 

However, in this case, you restored a file from the SharePoint library owned by the team. I'd expect any of the backup products to be able to do this because they can all deal with SharePoint. The difficulty with Teams is backing up and restoring personal and channel conversations. Some partial recovery of those items is possible from mailboxes (see https://www.petri.com/teams-compliance-story), but not in a useful form. We're waiting for the APIs from Microsoft to make true backup of Teams possible...

using e-Discovery PST Export Tool, you will be able to save backup of your Office 365 mailbox in PST format only. And due to the complexities involved with this method, it cannot be considered feasible for all. You must give a try to Office 365 Backup Tool that not only save Office 365 backup in PST format but into PDF, EML, EMLX, MBOX and MSG. I downloaded the software from Microsoft's official website: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Office-365-Backup-Tool-24174dee

Hey Bella, 

 

I don't think that the Technet Gallery is a good place to provide a Demo Edition of a Software. 

Not sure if this is even allowed. I raised a ticket.

The *.exe is not event trusted / signed.

You guys are very persistent at trying to sell people a product that is not fit for purpose. 

 

Once more with feeling: Do not back up Office 365 data to anything other than a secure environment that guarantees the ability to restore. Do not listen to anyone who says that you can backup Office 365 data to PSTs or any other local file type. All you do is to extract valuable data from a secure repository and move copies of that data into insecure and potentially problematic places. Don't let users use these tools either because it gives them a way to move data outside the control of the company, and you might end up in the situation of the Sony Corp. hack when attackers were able to copy PSTs from user PCs and share their content with the world. Let's eradicate PSTs instead of encouraging their use.

What's happening is that we have a group of people coming into this forum and trying to sell bad software to people who are looking for a solution and are unsure of what they should buy. Thanks for raising a ticket. I hope that these folk are banned from this community...

Received response: "We have unpublished and locked the post."

yeah. seriously. where is the right info amidst all these marketeers.And why is nobody talking about the tool my entire team has been working on? I feel Mail Backup X is popular and handy enough.

It backs up Office 365 so neatly

Because it doesn't seem to be an answer to my question at all? Your tool only back-ups email on a computer?

And it backs up Office 365 to local files (on Macs), which is not what you want to do when faced with mailboxes that might be > 100 GB (and think of this - does this wonderful utility deal with the 100 GB Recoverable Items data that a mailbox can now include?). And I am pretty positive that none of these wonderful "let's dump everything out of Office 365 to local files" products can deal with expandable archive mailboxes...  So, once again, we have another reference to a tool that possibly was useful in an on-premises environment in 2011, but is absolutely not the right answer for backup of cloud-based storage.

If you are concerned about the small business and the enterprise licences, this tool has separate policies: look at their buy now page: http://www.mailbackupx.com/buy-now.html
I think that resolves your concern.

Hi tony,

Mail Backup X supports backup to every possible offline/online location.

I have been using Dropbox. I have tried Google drive as well.

Take the trial for your concerned online storage.

Thanks for paying attention to my reply.

Phil, which document this comparison table was taken from?

Any which way you try and explain Mail Backup X, it is still a flawed product that extracts messages from secure online repositories and puts them into local files. This is OK for personal email, when you can choose to store email wherever you like, but it is absolutely the wrong thing for corporate email in an era when regulations like GDPR are on the horizon. How can any organization attest to compliance with GDPR if it allowed people to use a tool to export email to local storage? It’s inconceivable.
Office 365 looks like a a very helpful tool for the home user as well as business use. My usage has been and will continue to be personal use. I look forward to trying and working with office 365.

Thanks for the reply Tony.

I am not much awared of the GDPR thing. Will let you know after discussing this with the developer unit of this tool.

For my small team of 15, getting all my mails backed up at Dropbox with Mail Backup X seems quite suitable.

You must be one of the few people on the face of the planet who hasn't heard of GDPR by now...

 

See https://www.quadrotech-it.com/ten-things-office-365-tenants-can-do-to-prepare-for-gdpr/ 

Our customers are using the Layer2 Cloud Connector to backup their SharePoint libraries to a local NAS file share or to their own Azure cloud. While it is originally thought for two-way synchronization of pre-selected structured data and files / documents from 100+ IT systems with Office 365, it could also be used for backup (as a one-way sync) driven by flexible PowerShell scripting.

And that's just wonderful to be able to backup SharePoint libraries... But... given that the recent explosion of SharePoint usage within Office 365 is driven by Teams and Office 365 Groups, isn't backing up just one type of data from these unified repositories an imperfect solution? 

 

The point I am making is that solutions like this are based on old-style on-premises thinking and utterly fail to take account of the new world that exists within Office 365. It's great to back up one piece of data, until a problem happens and you discover that all the surrounding context is unavailable because that was not copied along with the backed up data.