Office 365 Mailbox Export to PST - Third Party Tools: What’s Your Experience?
Exporting Office 365 mailboxes to PST is still a common requirement in many Microsoft 365 environments, especially for backup, compliance, and migration scenarios. While Microsoft offers native options like Purview eDiscovery and Outlook export, many administrators also consider third-party tools when dealing with large mailboxes or bulk export requirements. In real-world scenarios, factors like speed, ease of use, permission handling, and consistency of exported data often influence the choice of tool. Some teams prefer native methods for compliance control, while others explore third-party solutions to simplify large-scale or repeated export tasks. For those working with Microsoft 365, what has your experience been with third-party PST export tools? Have they helped in your environment, or do you still rely mainly on Microsoft’s native options?How Microsoft 365 Backup works and how to set it up
Protect your Microsoft 365 data and stay in control with Microsoft 365 Backup — whether managing email, documents, or sites across Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Define exactly what you want to back up and restore precisely what you need to with speeds reaching 2TB per hour at scale. With flexible policies, dynamic rules, and recovery points up to 365 days back, you can stay resilient and ready. In this introduction, I'll show you how to minimize disruption and keep your organization moving forward even in the event of a disaster with Microsoft 365 Backup. Fine-tune what gets backed up. Back up by user, site, group, or file type — to meet your exact needs. Get started with Microsoft 365 Backup. Restore data in-place or to a new location. Compare versions before committing. Take a look at Microsoft 365 Backup. Restore content from months ago. Use fast weekly snapshots — even when the issue went unnoticed for weeks. Start here with Microsoft 365 Backup. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — Automate recovery process 00:37 — How to use Microsoft 365 Backup 01:49 — Compare with migration-based solutions 02:30 — How to set it up 03:33 — Exchange policy for email backup 05:00 — View and manage backups 05:24 — Recover from a restore point 07:45 — Restore from OneDrive & SharePoint 08:33 — Bulk restore 09:41 — Wrap up Link References Check out https://aka.ms/M365Backup Additional backup and restore considerations at https://aka.ms/M365BackupNotes Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics Video Transcript: -If something bad happens, like someone accidentally does a bulk file deletion or files are corrupted by a malicious user or ransomware, the first question is, can we recover from our backup? And the second question is, how long until we’re back online? Now to help you automate a targeted recovery process, Microsoft 365 Backup has a self-service solution that helps you scope the data that you want to recover. Your data remains inside your Microsoft 365 trust boundary, providing bulk restore recovery speeds of up to 2 terabytes per hour at scale. -Now, you might be wondering, do I even need to back up Microsoft 365 data? Let’s look at where it makes sense. So, first, if there’s a natural disaster, Microsoft 365 already natively offers high availability and disaster recovery with built-in service resiliency. That said, if you experience a data breach or maybe unexpected data corruption from a processor person on your end, or because of ransomware, your Microsoft support options depend on the workload in Microsoft 365. For example, for SharePoint, if you do nothing additional at all, when you contact Microsoft Support, if the event happened up to 14 days prior, Microsoft will recover OneDrive and SharePoint to a previous state within that timeframe. That said, if you want to get more specific on what gets restored or want to go back further than 14 days to recover your data, this is where the Microsoft 365 Backup service comes in. It’s self-service by design for SharePoint Exchange and OneDrive, giving more targeted control to scope exactly what you need to restore for up to 365 days. We’ll be adding more Microsoft 365 Backup coverage to other Microsoft 365 workloads over time. -Let’s compare this with migration solutions that you may be familiar with. These solutions work by moving your data and transforming it to store it into their service. Then, for recovery, the backup has to be restored back to its original form, then migrated back to your Microsoft 365 tenant, adding significant recovery time. Instead, Microsoft 365 Backup takes incremental snapshots of your data. The data stays in your Microsoft 365 service boundary in its native encrypted form. So, when you need to recover your data, the recovery process is accelerated. Microsoft 365 Backup is a consumption-based service with billing based on the amount of data protected. -Next, let’s walk through the setup steps and controls to manage backups and restore them. Starting with setting up a billing plan, where in advance, you’ll need to have an Azure subscription as well as a defined resource group. So, from the Microsoft 365 admin center under Setup, you’ll activate pay-as-you-go services and select Get started. Here, I’ll choose my Azure subscription and the resource group, and the region. Note that this region here is only used for billing. Your data will remain in the location that it’s currently in. Now, still on this page from the Settings tab, in the Storage location, you’ll choose Backup. Then, turn it on and save to confirm. -Now, with the service running, the rest of the steps will be performed from the Microsoft 365 Backup page in the admin center. So, here, I can configure backup policies to initiate automated backup processes. I have navigated within settings to Microsoft 365 Backup. From there, each workload, SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive, can have its own individual policies. So, I’m going to walk through an Exchange policy for email backup, but all three follow similar steps. After hitting Set up policy, the overview page displays policy attributes like the backup frequency. In this case, it’s every 10 minutes. The backup retention up to one year. -Now, the backup frequency does not impact your costs. Here, I can choose the selection method. The options are to upload a CSV file with mailboxes. Now, for SharePoint policies, this would be sites, and for OneDrive, we’d target user accounts. You can also use a dynamic rule, which allows the mailboxes in scope to dynamically update as group membership changes. Or you can define specific filters where you can select up to three distribution lists or security groups, or both. Now, these are the same filters for OneDrive policies. And for SharePoint, you can use filters for site names, URL contains values, or site last modified dates. The final option is then to select mailboxes individually, where you can manually select the mailboxes that you want to back up. In my case, I’ll choose the dynamic rule and use distribution lists, and I’ll select Project Falcon and Northwind Traders. -Now, I just need to review, and from there, I can create the policy. The policy will typically be active within an hour of creation, depending on the size of your group, and you can edit policy attributes at any time. So, now with the policy created, let’s move on to the process of viewing and managing backups. I’m back on the Microsoft 365 Backup page, and now I have active policy set up for each workload. And as mentioned, I can make required edits and changes to these policies from here. For example, you can pause backups or add, or remove sites from the SharePoint policy. -So, at this point, all of our services are running automated backups. Now, let’s assume that something happened to our Exchange mailboxes that were backed up and we want to recover from our restore point. Now, to simulate that, I’m logged in as Adele. I’m deleting email from the last month and even removing those from the Deleted items folder. One thing to note is that a restore from Exchange will only impact items that were modified, hard-deleted, or purged during the recovery window. So, let’s recover those deleted emails. So, I can start that for Exchange by hitting Restore mailboxes. -Now, for the choose selection method option, there is an option to upload a CSV list of mailboxes or select them individually. I’ll choose that one. And then, I’ll search for Adele and there she is. Now, I’ll add her mailbox and hit Next. Then, in content scope, I can select all emails including notes, contacts, calendars, and tasks, or I can choose a specific timeframe as well as apply filters, as you can see here. I’m going to keep the default of all items. Then, I can choose a time before the event happened to restore too. From there, I’ll be presented with available restore points. Email restore points are created every 10 minutes from when the policy’s active for up to 365 days. And I’ll choose this one for April 4th at 8:40 AM. -Then, for the destination of restored items, I have two primary options. I can replace mailbox items with backups, or the current version of the items will be overwritten by the items recovered from the restore point. Or I can create new mailbox items from backups within the user’s mailbox, which will be named Recovered Items, with the year, month, day, and time. I’ll keep replace mailbox items. Note that only effective items as mentioned will be overwritten. Any items received after the restore point or unmodified items will not be reverted and will also not get copied over if you decide to create a new folder. Once I confirm and commit to the file restore, from there, I can track progress from the Restoration tasks tab in the Microsoft 365 Backup page and see how things are going. So, I’m going to fast forward a little in time. And just to prove it, I’m back in Adele’s mailbox, and you can see that all of the emails that I deleted before have returned. That’s Exchange. -And there are also a few differences when restoring from OneDrive and SharePoint worth pointing out. Now, I’ll start with SharePoint. Here, I can upload a CSV file of site addresses or select them individually. I’ll do that. Now, I can select exactly which sites I want. There we go. Then, in Search for backups, you’ll see that things are a little different compared to Exchange. And again, I need to choose a date closest to the restore event, as well as a time of day. And for the previous two weeks, there are standard restore points captured every 10 minutes. And for a small-scale restore where you want to prioritize speed over the exact restore time, the prioritized backup options shown here will be faster and is recommended. These faster restore points are taken roughly every 24 hours. -One other thing to note here, if you’re doing a bulk restore, for example, to thousands of sites, then the fast restore points are not relevant. If you want to restore beyond two weeks, because these are weekly snapshots, if I choose the most recent date, where I know that my content is safe, the tool will automatically select the closest restore point captured prior to my selected time. And these weekly restore points are also fast restore points too. The other options are similar to what I showed in Exchange, where you can use in-place Restore or also create new sites. Note that content restored to a new location will apply and address suffix of R, followed by the restore number in a numeric sequence for each restore, starting with R0, as you can see with this site’s URL. In this case, you can copy restored items manually from the restored location to the prior location as needed, and in-place restore will mean users recent edits made to sites, files, and metadata since the time of the restore point will be lost. You can find additional backup and restore considerations at aka.ms/M365BackupNotes. -As you saw today, Microsoft 365 Backup doesn’t just let you self-manage your backups, it helps you recover faster. To find out more, checkout aka.ms/M365Backup. And keep watching Mechanics for the latest tech updates, subscribe to our channel, and thanks for watching.
Microsoft Graph Webhook Filtering Using Custom MAPI Properties for Weather Messages
Hi everyone, I'm working on an integration that uses Microsoft Graph change notifications (webhooks) to receive notifications for new email messages in a mailbox. Our use case is specific to Weather messages generated by our Messaging platform. Currently, we subscribe to mailbox notifications and receive events for all incoming emails, which results in significant post-processing on our side. I'm looking for a way to perform server-side filtering so that only Weather-related messages trigger webhook notifications. Current Situation We use Microsoft Graph webhook subscriptions on mailbox messages. Weather messages are delivered as standard emails. Subject-based filtering is sufficient for our requirements. We would like to avoid processing every incoming email after receiving notifications. Proposed Approach We are considering stamping weather emails with a custom MAPI extended property when the message is created, for example: Message subject = Weather using a custom single-value extended property. Questions Can Microsoft Graph webhook subscriptions filter notifications based on custom MAPI extended properties? If not directly in the subscription, can $filter be used on message queries against these custom properties after receiving notifications? Has anyone successfully implemented a solution where a custom MAPI property acts as a service tag for weather messages? Are there any recommended alternatives for reducing webhook traffic when only a subset of messages is relevant? Would Outlook categories, message classes, or other Exchange attributes provide a better filtering mechanism than custom MAPI properties? Our goal is to identify weather messages reliably while minimizing unnecessary webhook notifications and mailbox processing. Any guidance, examples, or best practices would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!15 productivity features in the new Outlook for Windows
Hello, Outlook community. I’m Vicki Milton, a Principal Product Manager on the Outlook team. Over the last year, we’ve added important capabilities across areas such as offline support, shared mailboxes, and PST files. Alongside those milestones, we've continued to deliver smaller improvements that help people work more efficiently throughout the day. This article highlights 15 productivity features in the new Outlook for Windows that can help you stay organized, reduce routine effort, and keep important work moving. Mail features Email remains central to how many people manage communications, priorities, and follow-up. Outlook includes familiar tools for composing and organizing messages, along with newer capabilities that can help reduce friction and make inbox management more efficient. Pin a mail: Keep important messages easy to find. The Pin feature keeps a selected email at the top of your inbox so it remains visible as new messages arrive. This can be useful for items you need to reference often or do not want to lose track of, such as travel details, approvals, or active requests. By keeping priority messages in view, Pin can reduce time spent searching and help you stay focused on current work. Snooze a mail: Return messages when they are relevant again. Snooze lets you temporarily remove an email from your inbox and have it reappear at a time you choose. This can help keep your inbox focused on messages you can act on now while ensuring follow-up items come back when they are timely. It is particularly useful for requests that depend on additional information, scheduled tasks, or work you plan to handle during dedicated focus time. Add multiple categories at the same time: Organize messages with fewer steps. If you use categories to manage incoming mail, Outlook makes it possible to apply more than one category in a single action. This can help when you need to capture multiple types of context, such as project, priority, or follow-up status, without reopening menus repeatedly. It is especially useful when processing a large number of messages. Sweep: Reduce repetitive inbox cleanup. Sweep lets you create automatic actions for messages from a specific sender. For example, you can delete promotional mail after a set period, keep only the latest message in a thread, or move recurring updates to a folder. This can help reduce manual cleanup and keep your inbox more focused on items that need attention. Schedule Send: Write on your schedule and deliver at the right time. Schedule Send lets you prepare messages when it is convenient for you and send them later at a time that works better for the recipient. This can improve visibility, support more intentional communication, and reduce the need to rely on reminders or leave messages in Drafts. Simplified folder sharing: Share folders more simply. Sharing a mail folder has traditionally required extra permission steps, especially for nested folders. Now, when you share a folder, Outlook can automatically apply the visibility permissions needed for its parent folders. This can reduce setup effort, help avoid access issues for recipients, and make folder sharing easier to complete with confidence. Calendar and meeting features For many people, the workday is shaped by meetings, schedule changes, and the need to stay aligned on what comes next. Outlook includes calendar and meeting capabilities that can help simplify planning, reduce coordination overhead, and make follow-up easier. Follow a meeting: Stay informed without attending live. The Follow RSVP option lets you indicate that you will not attend a meeting but still want access to the recap. This can be helpful when schedules overlap or when a meeting is useful to monitor without joining in real time. It can help you stay connected to outcomes and shared materials while keeping your calendar more manageable. Save calendar views: Return to the calendar setup you need more quickly. Saved Views let you store specific calendar combinations and switch back to them without rebuilding the same view each time. This can save time for people who move frequently between personal, team, and project schedules. It also can make it easier to review the right set of calendars for different planning tasks. Improved meeting tracking: Work with meeting responses more efficiently. Outlook includes tools that make it easier for organizers to review and manage meeting responses. You can sort attendee lists, search for names in the Tracking view, and copy or download response details when needed. These capabilities can be especially useful for larger meetings where attendance information needs to be reviewed quickly. Meeting recap: Find follow-up materials in one place. After a Teams meeting, the calendar event in Outlook can surface a Meeting recap with links to the recording, transcript, and shared files. This can make it easier to review what was discussed, confirm details, or catch up afterward. By keeping these materials together, Meeting recap can reduce the time it takes to get oriented after a meeting. Filtered views: Reduce visual clutter in your calendar. Filters let you hide meetings you are not attending and limit the distraction of declined or informational events. This can make it easier to scan your schedule, identify conflicts, and focus on the meetings that need your attention. For people with full calendars, it can help make planning more straightforward. Change a recurring event: Update future meetings while preserving earlier ones. When plans change, Outlook lets you edit the current event and all following events in a recurring series. This can make it easier to adjust details such as time, location, or agenda going forward without changing the record of past meetings. It can simplify updates for organizers and reduce disruption for attendees. Personalization and settings Settings can play a practical role in day-to-day productivity. A few adjustments can make it easier to focus, move between accounts and calendars, and work in a way that fits your preferences. Here are several settings-related features that can help make Outlook feel more streamlined and manageable. Rename your email accounts: Make the right inbox easier to recognize. If you use multiple accounts in Outlook, you can assign each one a custom name. This can help you tell accounts apart more quickly, reduce the chance of sending from the wrong inbox, and make navigation simpler as you move between accounts during the day. Modern themes: Choose a look that supports comfort and clarity. Outlook includes theme and color options that let you tailor the experience to your preferences. Visual settings can influence readability and comfort, especially for people who spend much of the day in email and calendar. Options such as Dark Mode and color customization can help make the interface feel easier to use over time. Keyboard shortcuts: Keep familiar ways of working. In Outlook, you can choose the shortcut style you prefer in Settings. This can help you maintain existing habits, reduce adjustment time, and complete common tasks with fewer steps. For people moving from classic Outlook or Outlook on the web, shortcut flexibility can make the transition more consistent. These features reflect a broader effort to help people work more efficiently in the new Outlook for Windows. Whether you are managing a high volume of email, coordinating a full calendar, or tailoring the experience to match your workflow, these updates are designed to reduce effort and improve day-to-day productivity. For more information and step-by-step guidance, see the Microsoft Support articles and the Learning Path.
The New Outlook Notifications for email with rules not working. Missing features
I have to use the New Outlook to be prepared for the eventuality when Microsoft forces the change. I'm missing notifications for emails coming in when it has mailbox rules to organize it. The Notification Center in Windows is ok, but there should be a way in the rules to set a notification in a window like the Reminders window. being able to set a specific sound would be beneficial as well. I've had to resort to using Categories and constantly checking Outlook to see if I missed anything. This has resulted in missing many time-sensitive alerts and emails. Such as a Midnight internet outage at a business-critical building on my day off. Resulting in 6 hours of downtime during business rather than a resolution before business opening.Microsoft Wants PowerShell Developers to Change How They Download Microsoft Modules
A Microsoft blog describes some changes for PowerShell developers in terms of installing modules and the role of the Microsoft Artifact Registry (MAR). In a nutshell, Microsoft intends the MAR to be the go-to place to download first-party PowerShell modules and other artifacts. This solves the problem of potentially compromised modules found in the PowerShell Gallery, but MAR can’t work if it doesn’t contain the modules people use. https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/05/microsoft-artifact-registry/
need exchange se for hybrid environment
We have a hybrid Office 365 environment with an Exchange Server 2016 that no longer performs any role. It does not host any mailboxes and is not used as an SMTP relay. We would like to keep an Exchange installation solely for administrative purposes through the GUI. Questions: 1. Can we keep Exchange Server 2016 installed? 2. If we need to install Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE), do we need licenses for this installation, considering that all our Office 365 licenses are Business licenses? Thank you.Outlook Cached Mode Repeatedly Re-syncs Mailbox After Restart (Starts Again Around 3.99 GB)
Hi everyone, I’m experiencing a strange Outlook Cached Exchange Mode issue with a Microsoft 365 mailbox after a recent Windows rebuild and wanted to see if anyone has seen similar behavior. Environment: Microsoft 365 mailbox (Exchange Online) Outlook for Microsoft 365 Version 2605 Build 16.0.20026.20076 64-bit Windows 11 25H2 Fresh OS rebuild performed twice New Outlook profile created Office completely reinstalled OST recreated multiple times Issue: When Cached Exchange Mode is enabled, Outlook starts downloading/synchronizing mail normally, and the OST file continues to grow correctly. However, after every reboot or Outlook restart, Outlook again shows “Downloading…” starting from around 3.99 GB. Important observations: Online Mode works perfectly OUTLOOK.EXE closes properly after exit OST file is NOT deleted and continues growing Sync slider changes (1 month, 1 year, all mail) make no difference Disabling Outlook indexing did not help New Outlook profile did not help Reinstalling Office did not help Problem only started after OS rebuild Before rebuild, same mailbox worked normally in Cached Mode No pending office or windows update. It does not appear to actually re-download the mailbox from scratch because the OST size keeps increasing, but Outlook repeatedly processes/downloads from around the same 3.99 GB point after restart. Has anyone seen: Cached Mode replaying synchronization repeatedly after restart? Similar behavior on recent Current Channel builds? Security/EDR products interfering with OST synchronization state? Any known regressions with Outlook Version 2605 Build 16.0.20026.20076? Any suggestions or similar experiences would be appreciated.
Is Office 365 E3 Developer free
Hi, My tenant had a license named "Office 365 E3 Developer" which allowed us to use Outlook / Exchange (among other Microsoft Office products). This license isn't from the Microsoft 365 Developer Program, which come with free licenses. This license costed CA$11.60 a month per user when we initially purchased it. On May 2, 2026 it still costs $11.60, but when I received my monthly invoice for this tenant, this license was free. I searched around to see whether this license became free recently, but I couldn't find any info on this. The links I found all say it's a paid license. I was wondering if there's any info on this to see why it became free? Or is it a mistake and Microsoft'll be charging us the next billing cycle? Jason
