Exchange Online PST Import Part 1: Pre-reqs & Initial Steps

Overview

I needed to upload large PST files into Exchange Online mailboxes as part of an Exchange 2007 to Exchange Online migration (staged approach).

When mailboxes were migrated to Exchange Online, corporate policy was for users to access the mailboxes via Outlook Web Access or their mobile. As they didn’t have access to the full Outlook client, their PST files needed to be made available to them. Hence the need to upload the PST files.

This article covers the pre-reqs and initial steps required for a network upload to Azure Blob storage. If you’ve already got these covered, move onto Exchange Online PST Import Part 2, where I cover how to perform a network upload to Azure Blob storage, and then a PST import into Exchange Online mailboxes.

Pre-reqs

In Exchange Online, the account performing these tasks needs to be assigned the Mailbox Import role. Click here to see how to do this, and what happens if you don’t.
In Exchange Online you need to be assigned the Mail Recipients role, OR be a Global Administrator in the Office 365 tenant.

Initial Steps

Log into the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center.

Click on Data governance, and then on Import.

On the Import page, click + New import job.

NewImportJob1

Enter a name for the job, you must use lower-case only letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores. Spaces are not allowed.

For example: pst_import_1

Click Next.

NewImportJob2

Check Upload your data. Click Next.

NewImportJob3

Determine the SAS URL

The SAS URL contains an access key. It’s required for uploading the PST files to Azure Blog storage, and for viewing the uploaded PST files using Azure Storage Explorer.

Click Show network upload SAS URL.

NewImportJob4