How to migrate Exchange public folders to Office 365 using CodeTwo Office 365 Migration?

If you need to migrate public folders from an on-premises Exchange Server to Exchange Online (Office 365), you have two options to choose from: migrate public folders using a native solution or use a third party application like CodeTwo Office 365 Migration.

CodeTwo Office 365 Migration minimizes the resources you need to use to perform the move. The application is easy to install, configure and use. It can be managed by just one administrator from one place. As the great part of the process is automated, the administrator does not have to do a lot of manual work. Instead, he or she can focus on other tasks.

There is also no need to play with PowerShell scripting. The program has a light graphical user interface, which allows managing all migration tasks, e.g. server connections, delta migrations, auto-matching of mailboxes or folder filtering. CodeTwo Office 365 Migration can create reports that help monitor the whole migration process – simply generate overall, job or mailbox reports directly from the panel or set up the program to generate them automatically and send them to you via email.

As the program ease the whole process, in this article, I will show you how to migrate Exchange public folders to Office 365 with CodeTwo Office 365 Migration.

Before migration

You need to install CodeTwo Office 365 Migration in your environment to perform this task. To download the program, visit this website, then run the installer and follow the wizard to install the program on your machine. To check system requirements for the program, click here.

Configure source and target server connections

Before you can start migration of public folders using CodeTwo Office 365 Migration, you have to connect the application to the source and the target servers. To do it, follow the steps below:

1. Open the program’s administration panel – you can run it from the Start menu.
2. In the Dashboard tab, go to the Define source server connections tile and click the gear icon.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Mange source servers connections window, click the New button and select the Exchange Server connection… option.
   
   
   
   
4. Then, follow the steps from the Source server connection wizard to configure the server connection.
5. Next, go back to the Dashboard tab, and click the gear icon in the Define target server connections tile. Follow the wizard to configure the target server connection.
6. Once you have finished, you are ready to create a migration job that will move Exchange public folders to Office 365.

Migrate public folders to Office 365

Important: To perform migration of public folders, you need to have 100 licenses of CodeTwo Office 365 Migration. The program always uses 100 licenses, no matter how many public folders you want to migrate. Additionally, be sure to create public folders on the target server prior to migration – see this KB article for instruction.

To migrate the content of public folders from Exchange to Office 365, you need to create a migration job. Follow the steps below to set it up:

Create a migration job

1. Go to the Jobs tab, click New and select Migration job from Exchange Server…. This way you open a new job creator.
   
   
   
   
2. In the Job name section, provide your job name. Click Next.
3. Then, you need to select public folders in the Migrate mailboxes fulfilling the following conditions section.
   
   Note: By default, there are All users and Public Folders selected. As we want to set up this job exclusively for public folders, All users selection needs to be removed. To remove it, select it and click Remove. Then, click Next.
   
   
   
   
4. In the Target mailboxes section, the connection should be already configured (we covered this in the Configure source and target server connections section above). Click Next.

Match source public folders with the target ones

1. The next step is to match source public folders with the target ones. In the Match mailboxes section, click the Match mailboxes button.
2. In the resulting window, click on Click to match target and Choose an existing user…
   
   
   
   
3. In the Match target user/mailbox window, find your public folders mailbox, select it and click OK.
   
   
   
   
4. In the Match mailboxes window, you should now see public folders matched.
   
   
   
   
5. Click Save in the top left corner of the window to save changes. Close the window. Then, go back to the initial Match mailbox window. Click Next.
6. In the Scheduler section, you can set up activity time for the migration job. In my example, I leave it untouched as I will run the job manually.
7. Next step is to specify Time filter. By default the Migrate all items regardless of their age option is checked. If you do not want to change anything here, click Next.
   
   
   
   
8. In the Folder filter section, specify folder types you want to migrate. Click Next.
9. In the Address rewrite section, leave the checkbox ticked unless you are sure you do not want to change EX to SMPT addresses. Click Next.
10. In the Concurrency section, you do not need to change anything. Click Next.
11. The final step is Job summary where you can overview your settings. Once everything is set up correctly, click Finish.

Start migration of public folders

1. Now go to the Jobs tab in the administration panel.  There you should find your migration job. Click Start to run it.
   
   
   
   
2. Once the migration job is running, you can monitor the process directly in the program’s panel (in the sections: Job migration progress, Job good news, Job bad news, you will see statistics and alerts from the migration process). After migration is finished, you can also generate overall, job or mailbox reports that illustrate the migration results.
   
   
   
   

And that’s it. Migration of public folders is performed without PowerShell scripting, a lot of manual work and wasting company resources. With CodeTwo Office 365 Migration, the migration process is fast and easy.

Other functionalities of the program are, for example:

• Delta scan and migration
• Migrating all item types from Exchange
• Stopping and resuming migration process
• Scheduling feature
• And many more.

Additionally, if you have any questions about program’s functionalities, you can always contact our Customer Service, which is available 24 hours a day, five days a week.

Give the program a try

If you want to test CodeTwo Office 365 Migration in your environment, download a trial version from this website and test the program for 30 days at no cost. The only limitation is that you can migrate 10 items per folder.

Download CodeTwo Office 365 Migration

See also:

• Automatically create mailboxes when migrating to Exchange or Office 365
• Top 5 practical tools for Exchange Server from CodeTwo to make admin’s life easier