Migrate from Gmail to Office 365

[MyBite]

Hey Everyone,

I'm currently in the process of migrating a client from GSuite to Office 365 for the first time and had a question regarding shared mailboxes.

The client has a ton of user mailboxes in GSuite that they would like converted to shared mailboxes. Would I be able to create their accounts as shared mailboxes in Office 365 before migrating the accounts and move the emails directly into those accounts or will I need to create the accounts as User accounts with a license in Office 365 first and then move the emails over and then convert to a shared mailbox and remove the license.

Hopefully that makes sense! Thank you!

[#2]

You can create shared mailboxes in Office 365 without licenses and migrate a mailbox to it, yes!

What will you use to do the migration?

Adam

[#3]

@adam deltinger 

My plan was to follow this guide and use the IMAP migration for emails

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mailbox-migration/migrating-imap-mailboxes/migrate-g-suite... 

So I can go ahead and create all my shared mailboxes before hand and should be okay in migrating the emails to it with IMAP?

EDIT: I found that this was an option https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2019/04/16/introducing-the-new-migration-experience-fro...

Seems like Microsoft has added a new GSuite migration option within the EAC. I found this guide https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Exchange/mailbox-migration/perform-g-suite-migration but I'm unsure if it will work for Shared mailboxes

[#4]

@MyBite 

You don't need a license for the shared mailbox but need to assign a licensed user to it prior to migration. If this is your 1st G-Suite migration and budget allows, you might want to consider using a 3rd party migration tool to assist. G-Suite IMAP migrations can be tricky and time consuming, for example Google throttles mailbox transfer @ 2GB per day with a 24 hour wait before the sync process starts again.

disclaimer: i have no interest, financial or otherwise, with any of the tool vendors. i have however used several over the course of many migrations, they really do save time and provide top notch support.

[#5]

Keep in mind also that a 3rd party license will probably be required for the shared mailbox

[#6]

@adam deltinger 

yes, agreed and good point. the one's I've used do count shared mailboxes as a migration 'seat'.