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?
Taken over MS365 tenant, failed payment stuck
Hi all, I have taken over an MS365 tenant for a customer that took over another company. This was a tenant managed by an MSP, but they canceled the relationship. So I tried to purchase a Business Premium subscription for one month and couple it to my admin account, so that I can decoupled some devices from Intune, and also reinstate 1 or 2 accounts for the time being. I added a new billing profile (I could not add a billing account) while ordering from Microsoft directly. However the payment failed, there were 3 attempts in very quick succession. Probably because my card setting were too strict. So I switched the payment method to another card after this. However since then I have one product under "Your products" with the label "failed", the errors it gives: "We weren't able to create a subscription for one of your products. Update the selected filters and choose subscription status Failed to view the product in the list below." Clicking the product just shows "subscription failed". It does show renews on 1-7-2026. So it is expiring? How can I retry the payment? Unfortunately all support options keep pointing to the previous tenant owner so I'm posting here. So I'm trying here. I've been at this for way too long already.Microsoft Cans Power BI App for Reporting Microsoft 365 Usage
Microsoft has announced that the Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics Power BI app will retire on August 1, 2026. The alternative is the usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center or to develop a custom Power BI dashboard based on data imported through the Graph usage reports API. The decision isn’t surprising, but I’m sure that some will mourn the passing of Microsoft’s first tool to report usage information. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/29/microsoft-365-usage-analytics/Planner Synchronization of Microsoft 365 Message Center Notifications Improves
Microsoft published the very good news that the Planner synchronization with the Microsoft 365 message center will support HTML formatted text when it creates or updates tasks. This might seem like a small change, but if you use Planner to track the progress of anything, like we do for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook, it’s sometimes the little changes that make the biggest impact. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/15/planner-synchronization/
Best way to enforce manager check-ins across the org using M365 tools?
Our CHRO wants every manager to have at least bi-weekly check-ins with directs and wants visibility into whether its actually happening. Right now theres zero tracking. Some managers do it, some dont, and leadership has no idea. I looked at Viva Insights but it only shows meeting frequency, not whether there was an actual structured conversation. Is there a way to get reporting on this through admin center or do we need something separate?Lost Access to Microsoft Authenticator
Hello team, I reimage my phone, unfortunately lost Microsoft Authenticator, I dont have cloud backup enabled in my Authenticator, I try login account in Microsoft Authenticator, but still ask me Authenticator verification, and no other option (like email, SMS, or backup codes) shown, I'm register Microsoft 365 developer account, i'm only admin, could you please let me know the exact steps I need to take or if there is a support escalation route I should follow, thanks for advance.Entra and Microsoft 365 Could Improve License Reporting
License insights is a new feature in the Entra admin center. The Microsoft 365 admin center also shows some license insights in a dashboard card. The two views don’t line up. This isn’t very surprising because different teams generated the information, but it would sure be nice if Microsoft delivered comprehensive license reporting for Microsoft 365 tenants, including the Entra premium licenses. https://office365itpros.com/2026/04/24/license-insights/
Former short-term employee added as Billing Admin
Hi everyone, I’m hoping to get some insight into how this could have occurred and what we should review to prevent it from happening again. We are a small organization, and we recently discovered that a former employee (who only worked with us for about two weeks) was listed as a Billing Administrator in our Microsoft 365 tenant. This person is no longer with the company. Their Microsoft account has already been deleted. We are a small team with very limited admin roles assigned. We do not recall intentionally granting them billing-level permissions. We are trying to understand: How could a short-term user have been assigned the Billing Administrator role? Could this have been done automatically through another role assignment (e.g., Global Admin inheritance)? Is it possible this occurred through a CSP/partner relationship? Are there logs we should specifically review beyond standard audit logs? What are best practices to prevent this from happening again in a small tenant? We are currently reviewing: Admin role assignments Audit logs Partner relationships MFA enforcement for all admins If anyone has seen something similar or can suggest specific logs, settings, or controls we should review, I would really appreciate the guidance. Thanks in advance for your help.Transfer MS Office 365 Business ownership from MSP to own MS Business account
Hello Everybody I need to transfer my clients MS Office 365 Business from current MSP to their own MS Business account. Current MSP very bad service. So, at the end they want to manage their Emails\Licenses on MS Admin Center. What are the steps on doing this?
Finding Forwards based upon to address
I have a distribution list that is designed to send an email to every mailbox associated with my company's domain. This distribution list only contains company generated mailboxes. When I send an email to this list, I get automatic replies from 2 email addresses that are not associated with my company. The emails state that those employees have new email addresses and to update my address book. The address that I get the reply from does not disclose the employee's name. All I know is that it's from a business position like school principal or school resource officer. Yes, I can lookup the name of the current office holder, but the account is generically tied to the position rather than a specific employee. The most likely cause of this is that 2 of the email accounts in my company have forwarding turned on. How do I search my company directory to find the 2 mailboxes that are forwarding to external email addresses so I can turn off that forwarding? I've read that this can be achieved with a powershell command but have not seen anything in the way of a working script. Nor do I have the slightest knowledge to write my own script.
