Guide: Export Office 365 Archive to PST Using eDiscovery

Why export Office 365 archive mailbox to a PST file?

Archiving in Microsoft 365 (also called In-Place Archiving) provides users with more mailbox storage space. After you turn on archive mailboxes, a user's current mailbox becomes their primary mailbox and an additional mailbox is created, called the archive mailbox. In general, Office 365 exporting archive mailbox to PST is needed in the following situations:

• You want to move archived email from one email account to another email account.
• You want to transfer archived email from PC to PC or from PC to Mac.
• You want periodic backups.

No matter which is your case, move on to learn how to do Office 365 exporting online archive to PST step by step.

👉 How to export Office 365 archive to a PST file with eDiscovery
👉 Easy tool to backup Office 365 archive mailbox🔥

How to export Office 365 archive to a PST file with eDiscovery

eDiscovery tools in Microsoft Purview enable you to search for content in Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Yammer teams. You can search mailboxes and sites in the same eDiscovery search, and then export the search results. Follow these steps to export Office 365 archive mailbox to a PST file：

1. After logging in to your Office 365 portal, access the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. In your Microsoft 365 admin center, expand Admin centers and click Security.
3. In the Microsoft 365 Defender admin center, go to Permissions > Email & collaboration roles > Roles and click eDiscovery Manager role group.

4. In the eDiscovery Manager role group properties pane, add your account to the eDiscovery Administrator list using the Edit button and following a few simple steps.

 ✍ Note: The role group normally has the following roles assigned: Case Management, Compliance Search, Export, Hold, Preview, Review and RMS Decrypt. If the Export role is missing, you can add it by clicking the Edit role group button.

5. Now, log in to the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, go to Content search, and click the New search button.

 ✍ Note: If you are missing the Content search option, it is most likely related to the eDiscovery permissions you set in the previous steps. Changes in the eDiscovery permissions might take even up to 24 hours to apply. 

6. A wizard that lets you customize all aspects of a content search opens. 

• Name and description: name your search and describe it as necessary.
• Locations: specify which mailbox data you wish to export. If you want to export data from all mailboxes, select Exchange mailboxes. You can narrow down your search to specific users, groups or teams by clicking the link and selecting specific items in a picker pane.
• Conditions: further narrow down your search with the available filtering options. For example, enter “archive” in the Keywords section.
• Review your search: click Submit and Done to close the wizard and start your search immediately.

7. The search will be performed in the background. In the pane that pops up, you can see if the search has been completed and the details concerning its result. If it’s completed, click the Actions button and choose Export results.

8. In this window, you can choose if you want to include encrypted files. You can also decide how to export the Exchange content. Here I keep the default options. Click Export at the bottom of the window when you are finished.

 ✍ Note:  Do not check the Enable deduplication option, unless you want the search results to be exported to a single PST file.

9. The wizard starts to export data. Go to the Export tab and choose your search again to see its progress.
10. You can either wait for the task to finish or click Download results right away. If you start to download the results before the export is completed, the download and export tools should finish at the same time. Remember to copy the special Export key which will be required in the next step.

11. The eDiscovery Export Tool will start. Paste the export key copied in the previous step and specify a folder where you want to save the PST files. Then click Start to begin the export.

Easy tool to backup Office 365 archive mailbox

As you see, it involves many steps to do Office 365 exporting archive mailbox to PST using eDiscovery. If you just want to create a backup for Office 365 archive mailbox, you can try the easy-to-use backup tool, AOMEI Backupper Professional. You can benefit a lot from its following features:

• It offers the Outlook Backup feature to backup all of your emails, contacts, notes, calendars, and tasks in Outlook to a local, external, or network drive.
• It supports Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, and any other email accounts added into Outlook client.
• It enables you to backup your email data automatically using the Schedule Backup feature.
• It runs well on all Windows PC systems including Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista and XP.

Download AOMEI Backupper to have a try now.

Then, follow the instructions below to backup Office 365 archive mailbox with AOMEI Backupper:

Step 1. Add your Microsoft 365 email account to Outlook.

• If you're adding your first email account, go to Start > Outlook, enter your Microsoft 365 email address and click Connect.

• If you’re adding an additional email account, go to Start > Outlook > File > Add Account. The rest steps are the same as you add the first email account.

Step 2. Install and launch AOMEI Backupper. Click Backup and select Outlook Backup.

Step 3. Click Add Outlook Data. In the popup window, select the archive mailbox under your Microsoft 365 email account as the backup source.

Step 4. Select a destination path to save the backup image. There are three suboptions: Select a local path, Add Share or NAS Devices, and Select a cloud drive.

Step 5. To have the backup task run automatically, click Schedule Backup to configure it. Finally, click Start Backup to begin backing up Microsoft 365 archive mailbox.

Conclusion

To export Office 365 archive to a PST file, you can use the eDiscovery tools. However, the operations are cumbersome and error-prone especially for naive users. If what you want to do is to backup your Office 365 archive mailbox, you can pick the easy yet powerful backup software – AOMEI Backupper. It enables you to backup all data in the email accounts that you have added into Outlook client with simple steps.

What’s more, AOMEI Backupper is the best Samsung SSD transfer program. You can use it to clone HDD to Samsung SSD, clone Samsung SSD to another SSD, etc. Why not try it now?