Office 365 is the most powerful service available inside Microsoft 365 – however backup service for your Office 365 data is not a part of it. It has been estimated that over 81% of data loss in Office 365 occurs due to simple errors from the user end. Due to this organizations/users require to back up their data manually protect them – from user error to major data breaches.
This is why in this article, we will demonstrate the best way to backup Office 365 emails with and without the use of an admin account.
There are a number of ways through which a user can save emails from Outlook Web App to Computer. Some of the possible solutions have been described below. Follow the step by step:
Outlook uses a personal storage file or PST to save all its mailbox data on the user’s local machine. One can archive all their mailbox data and save it in a ‘.pst’ file format.
An eDiscovery PST Export Tool is an inbuilt application provided by Microsoft. It helps to export Office 365 mailbox to PST file via eDiscovery. This creates Office 365 Exchange backup by downloading email files, contacts, and calendars to an Outlook PST format. It is considered to be the best way to backup Office 365 emails as it is free to implement
Also Read: Know Office 365 Email Backup Policy For Data Protection
To access this tool special privileges are needed. The use of the eDiscovery tool is granted by an admin account holder. Follow the steps below to acquire the permissions needed to access the tool.
Step 1: Firstly, log in to your Office Account online with Administrator credentials.
Step 2: Next, Go to Admin>>Exchange like the image shown below
Step 3: Now, click Permissions from the left pane. Then, go to Admin Roles>>Discovery Management.
Step 4: From Discovery Management, click the ‘+’ sign to add Roles. Click on Mailbox Import Export below roles. Then, under Members, click the ‘+’ sign again and click once on the name of the user. After that, click Save.
Step 5: This will grant access to the eDiscovery Export tool. The member with the aforementioned username has been assigned the privilege can start the download process. Here is the step-by-step method to archive and export the Office 365 mailbox to PST file format.
There are pros and cons to performing any technical process to download PST from Office 365 online. Some of the drawbacks of using manual procedures have been discussed below.
The overall manual procedure of granting permissions and using an inbuilt tool can be very tiring and complicated. Often users look for the best alternative way to backup Office 365 emails from their user account. And, many opt for using a reliable application such as Office 365 Backup Tool.
This automated tool is an easier and faster way to backup mailboxes from single/multiple user accounts in just a few clicks. Apart from email backup, this utility can be used to backup other items as well, such as contacts, calendars, archive mailbox, shared mailbox, etc.
Quick steps to backup Office 365 emails are:
Have a look at the salient features of the software:
Step: 1 Download, install and open the tool, and select the source and the destination platform as Office 365 and Outlook.
Step: 2 Select the mailbox categories from the given list and also use the date filter provided in this tool for selective data backup in Office 365.
Step: 3 login with the Admin ID and Application ID and click on the validate button.
Step: 4 Define the destination path and location for the resultant PST file on the computer.
Step: 5 Now, choose the desired user mailbox to backup and hit the start backup button in order to backup Office 365 emails locally.
In this article, we have listed the best way to backup Office 365 emails using both native and automated tools. The process to backup Office 365 mailbox locally isn’t an easy task, especially when doing it with a free native tool such as the eDisocvery tool. It requires high technical skills and good working experience of working with Admin Center. Moreover, the same complicated steps need to be performed every time the backup needs to be created. Whereas, automated tools are quite easy to handle and save time in case of regular backup.