Data restoring

CodeTwo Backup has the ability to restore data from your backups. To simplify the selection of data to be restored, it is possible to search and browse through the backed-up data directly in the program. This allows the user not only to pick the right data but also to preview all data collected in a storage, including email attachments or documents from SharePoint libraries. As the software's indexing service runs seamlessly in the background, the user can benefit from fast searching and filtering of items. CodeTwo Backup also features item versioning, which makes it easy to preview all versions of items backed-up in a storage. Each storage mirrors the structure of the source mailbox or SharePoint site, so browsing through the backed-up data is as easy as via MS Outlook. The granular recovery feature makes it possible to restore entire mailboxes and SharePoint sites, as well as individual folders, emails, SharePoint lists and libraries, OneNote notebooks, and so on. The user can choose to restore the most recent versions of items or versions from a specific time point.

Fig. 1. Choosing versions of items to be restored.

The restore process

The process of data restoring is a one-time job. CodeTwo Backup can run multiple jobs in parallel – restore jobs included – so many different mailboxes can be restored at the same time. Restoring is not limited to the original location – you can restore Exchange data to a different folder in the original mailbox or to a whole different mailbox. The same goes for the SharePoint data – you can easily recover the entire site collection or a specific list, library or folder to another SharePoint site, list, library, etc. Moreover, an admin can even decide to restore data to an alternative server – it is just a matter of the restore job's configuration.

Fig. 2. Choosing a target server for restoring Exchange data: on-premises Exchange Server or Office 365 (Microsoft 365).

If the user wants to restore data to its original location, the question arises what happens if identical items are already present in the target mailbox. Read the next section to learn more about resolving filename collision conflicts in the program.

Resolving naming conflicts

CodeTwo Backup automatically deals with any filename collision conflicts that come up during the restore process. However, the user must first decide which approach the software should take in such situations. When configuring a restore job, an admin can decide if the software should duplicate items, overwrite items in the target server with backed-up items or skip the restore operation for these files. Once a proper option is selected, the restore process is smooth and quiet – no annoying pop-up windows asking what to do every single time an identical item is found in the target server.

Fig. 3. Three ways of resolving naming conflicts.

See also

Restoring backups - in this article, you will learn how to filter the content to be restored, create new and manage existing restore jobs, and how to monitor a restore process.