How to Upload PST files to Office 365

How to Upload PST Files to Office 365

Network upload Flow diagram

To start the Process, login to Office 365 and login as a Global Administrator.

https://portal.office.com

Once logged in Navigate to Security and Compliance.

1. Click on Data Governance
2. Click on Import

P.S. You can also click on “Create an Import Job” from the Dashboard of the Security and Compliance Center.

Before you can start with the Import job creation, the Administrator needs to assign the permissions to Import and Export the Mailbox. By default, these permissions are not assigned to any administrator.

To assign the new permission, do the following.

Launch the Exchange Online Admin Console

1. Click Permissions
2. Admin Role and select “Organization Management”
3. Click the “pen” to edit the role

From within the Organization Management Role, click on + under roles.

Click on the Mailbox Import Request, Then click on add and Ok

Click on Save, to save the changes made to the Organization Management Role.

Now that the permissions have been assigned, navigate back to Security and Compliance Centre and click on Data Governance and Import.

You will notice that you now have an option to create a New Import Job. By clicking on

+ New Import Job

New Import Job wizard will start, provide a name for the Import Job and click Next.

Next, you have an option to select upload or Ship a drive to a physical location. For the purpose of this blog post, I will select Upload and click Next.

From the next screen is where the FUN starts, Click on Show network upload SAS URL. This is the destination where you will be uploading your PST files to.

Click on Download Azure AzCopy, this is the Tool which will be used to upload the Data.

Once the Download completed, Run the setup for AzCopy.

To start the upload process, open the AzCopy Tool and use the following script to run the upload.

AzCopy.exe /Source:"\\FILESERVER1\PSTs" /Dest:"https://3c3e5952a2764023ad14984.blob.core.windows.net/ingestiondata?sv=2012-02-12&se=9999-12-31T23%3A59%3A59Z&sr=c&si=IngestionSasForAzCopy201601121920498117&sig=Vt5S4hVzlzMcBkuH8bH711atBffdrOS72TlV1mNdORg%3D" /V:"c:\Users\Admin\Desktop\AzCopy1.log" /Y

P.S. Change the Source to a UNC share that has the PST files and change the Destination Url to the SAS Url provided in the above steps.

The Azure Command Line Storage Tool looks as follow.

Next use the above provided script and paste it into the Azure command line tool and press enter.

As you can see, I have tested with a small PST file and the Upload completed successfully.

To view all files that have been uploaded, Install the Azure Storage explorer which can be downloaded from the below link.

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=544842

Click on Download Storage explorer.

Start the installation of the Storage Explorer.

From the Home Screen of the Storage Explorer, you will be presented with a screen to create a new connection.

Select “Use a connection string or a shared access signature Url”, then click Next

Select “Use a SAS URl”, this is the link provided during the steps on top.

Once the link has been copied into the URL space, the rest of the details will auto-complete once you click Next.

On the Next page, you will be presented with a summary, click Connect to establish a connection to the Blob storage.

Once the connection has been established, you will be able to see the imported data under blob containers.

Now, that a file has been uploaded and is visible you can continue to move on to the next steps which are creating a mapping file.

A copy of the mapping file can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=544717

The mapping file will look as follows.

Here is an example of a modified mapping file.

Next, we need to complete the Import Job process which was started at the beginning of the blog post.

Tick the following options.

1. I’m done uploading my files
2. I have access to the mapping file

Click on Next to continue.

Select the mapping file during this process and click Validate.

Once the validation process completes, click on Save.

Click on Close.

Once you click on Close, the Status of the newly created Import Job will open and looks as follows.  Close this page.

On the Import Job Dashboard, you will see that the Import job which was created is ready to be completed.

Click on “Ready to Import to Office 365”

Click on “Import to Office 365”, from the Top Left-Hand corner.

On the Import screen, you have an option to filter the data that you want to import.

For the purpose of this post, I will select no and import all data and click next.

On the last screen, you will have a view of how much data will be imported into the mailbox.

In my case, there is none, just an empty PST file.

Click on Import data to start the process.

When your import is successful, you will see the following screen.

All of my 0 B data has been imported.

Click on Close.

Back on the Dashboard view, you can see that the import is busy running.

Click on the Import Job to view the status of the data importing.

To verify if the newly imported PST file is visible in the user’s mailbox, login to the Mailbox.

As we can see from the image below, the PST file has been uploaded and the folder that we specified during the mapping file has been created.

Once everything like storage explorer and storage cmd tools has been installed, the process to upload gets easier and quicker.

More details about the Upload and import process can be found on this Microsoft Blog.

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