How to Migrate IMAP to Office 365 in Bulk Without MS Outlook

Summary:- IMAP email accounts are most common among business people as they come with custom domain names. However, for multiple reasons, most businesses prefer Office 365 accounts over their IMAP email accounts, such as advanced functionalities, enhanced security, and numerous other services. So, they prefer to migrate IMAP to Office 365 accounts. In this blog, we are going to provide complete information on how to perform the migration process. Both manual and professional approaches use the IMAP to IMAP Converter tool in order to make this process quicker and easier. Let’s start this write-up by describing the reasons behind this cause.

 

Key Reasons Behind Migrating Email IMAP to Office 365

There are multiple reasons available why users prefer Office 365 over IMAP. O365 provides numerous advantages over IMAP accounts. Let’s discuss some of it, which are as follows:

  1. Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud-based office suite that gives you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, and Exchange.
  2. You can manage your business efficiently with it, as it is fast and effective.
  3. A secure and robust email solution is offered by Office 365.
  4. Calendars are also useful for managing appointments and important events.
  5. With an Office 365 account, backing up and migrating your mailbox will be easy.

Because of all these above-mentioned reasons, users prefer to migrate IMAP to Office 365 accounts.

Measures To Be Kept in Mind While IMAP to Microsoft 365 Migration

Below are some of the steps that you need to keep in mind before starting the process of exporting your IMAP mailboxes to Office 365 email accounts. Because the manual procedure is quite tedious and complicated.

  • Emails may not be found if the Messaging Record Policy (MRM) or Archival Policy is enabled. Using this functionality, move your emails to the archive folder and flag them as missing.
  • It has a limitation of migrating a maximum of 5,00,000 emails from user mailboxes.
  • Using this approach, you can migrate the largest email size to 35 MB.
  • Through this manual approach, users can only migrate IMAP emails. Other Office 365 items, such as contacts and calendars, cannot be migrated.
  • Before beginning the IMAP to Office 365 account migration, users must first be created in an Office 365 account.

Method 1: Proper Manual Techniques to Migrate IMAP to Office 365

The manual procedure to migrate IMAP to an Office 365 account is quite tricky and involves multiple stages. Users should perform every step in the proper sequence to successfully migrate their mailbox data. Also, fulfill some of the prerequisites before migrating emails.

Prerequisites Required to Import IMAP Email to Office 365

  • First, connect your IMAP domain to your Office 365 account. It will permit Office 365 to import emails from another email address.
  • Creating user mailboxes in the target Office 365 account is necessary because you have to provide an appropriate destination for every IMAP user account.

Step 1: Initially, Identify the Server Settings of your IMAP Account

In order to migrate IMAP to an Office 365 email account, users must be aware of the incoming and outgoing server settings of their IMAP email account. Without knowing the server settings, it’s impossible to initiate the migration. On Google, this information is available. Also, users can identify these details from the IMAP account.

Step 2: Secondly, Create a File of IMAP Accounts Credentials

In the second stage, users need to create a CSV file containing the login credentials ( Email Address and Password) of the source IMAP email account. This CSV file provides access to source IMAP user mailboxes, which helps users to add IMAP emails to Office 365 accounts easily.

Open Notepad and write the email address and password of every IMAP user account, separated by commas without any space. In a new line, the details of each mailbox should be written. Now, save the file with .csv at the end.

Step 3: Thirdly, Through Classic EAC, Connect IMAP Account to Office 365

One of the functionality in Office 365 is the Migration Endpoint, which is mainly used to connect other email accounts to the Office 365 account. Users need to create a migration endpoint in order to migrate IMAP to Office 365.

  1. Sign in to your Office 365 account. Navigate to the Admin option and choose Exchange.
  2. Choose the Exchange Admin Center option and select the Recipient option.
  3. Then, hit on the Migration option. Tap the More button and select Migration Endpoint.
  4. After that, hit the Add button (+ icon) to create a new migration endpoint.
  5. A pop wizard will appear. Hit on the IMAP button and provide a suitable IMAP server name.
  6. After successfully connecting to Office 365, you will see a general information page for the Migration Endpoint.
  7. Enter the desired details of the Migration endpoint and click the New button to create the Migration Endpoint.

Step 4: Fourthly, Create a Fresh Batch for Migration

In this step, we will use the CSV file created earlier, which contains all the desired user mailboxes for conducting migration in bulk. Follow the steps below to create a new batch for migration.

  1. In the Exchange Admin Center, choose the Recipient button.
  2. Hit the Add button and select the Migrate to Exchange online option.
  3. After that, select the IMAP Migration option and click Next.
  4. A pop-up will appear. Tap the Browse button and select the CSV file.
  5. All user accounts will be shown on the screen. Validate and click Next.
  6. You will see the IMAP Migration Configuration page. Hit Next to proceed.
  7. After that, choose the newly created Migration Endpoint.
  8. Provide the migration batch name and hit the Next button.
  9. Further, the migration batch has begun.

Step 5: Lastly, Routing Email to Office 365 Account

In order to migrate IMAP to Office 365 account, users need to point the DNS records to the IMAP email account, as they should be directed toward the source email account. As soon as the migration process is complete, it is important to point them to the Office 365 account.

After Migrating all your IMAP mailboxes to your Office 365 account, users need to delete the migration batch you created. It will ultimately stop the synchronization of your IMAP account with the Office 365 account.

Note:- This is the completed manual to import IMAP to Office 365 accounts. It has certain limitations, such as the process being quite lengthy, time-consuming, and complicated. In case you are a non-technical user, we would never recommend you go with the manual procedure; rather, we suggest you go for the third-party software, which is the best professional utility available online. Let’s discuss this utility in more detail.

Method 2: Professionally Migrate IMAP to Office 365 in Bulk Without MS Outlook

IMAP to IMAP Converter Software is the best utility that permits users to migrate or convert all the emails of IMAP Server mailboxes locally on their PC in different file formats. Such as it allows users to export IMAP emails to MBOX, PST, EML, and many more. Additionally, users can migrate all the emails in bulk to Office 365, Gmail, and many other email clients. A free demo version of this tool is also available, which can easily migrate 50 emails per folder.

Let’s move forward and look for detailed stepwise instructions for this utility.

Step-by-Step Instructions to Migrate IMAP to Office 365

  1. Download, launch, and run the IMAP to IMAP Converter tool on your device. Click Continue to proceed forward.
  2. Select Single Mode or Batch Mode to backup single as well as multiple email accounts. Provide your Email Address, Password, Host, and Port number, and then hit the Login button.
  3. Tick mark the required folders from the tree structure and hit the Next button. From the Email Client option, choose the email client Office 365 option from the drop-down menu.
  4. Here, we have signed in with direct modern authentication. Please go back to the software after successful authentication.
  5. If you want to fetch all the user mailboxes automatically, then check the Assign Impersonation Right tick-mark the mailboxes from the table, and hit Next to move forward.
  6. Select the Office 365 Mailbox, Archive Mailbox, or Public Folder and hit Next to process further. Select the additional features as needed. Hit Next to start the migration process.

Conclusion

Through this blog, both of the solutions we have presented to you. Manual procedures consist of certain stages, and it is quite tricky and a bit lengthy procedure to accomplish the task. However, as an alternative, we have suggested a professional approach to migrate IMAP to Office 365 accounts in the easiest manner. Users can go for any of the approaches as per their requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do I migrate the IMAP mailbox to an Office 365 account?

Ans- By using professional software, users can easily migrate IMAP to an Office 365 account. This utility can easily convert and migrate all IMAP server mailbox emails into multiple different file formats and email clients. 

Q. Can I import IMAP data with attachments to Office 365?

Ans- Yes, through automated software, users can smoothly import IMAP data along with attachments to Office 365.

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About The Author:

As a Technical expert, I love to write blogs on email migration, data recovery, and cloud migration. In my free time, I like to research new things related to technology.

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