Office 365 - Importing archived/external email folders
Accessing archived/external email folders
Because the mailboxes on the old exchange platform only had limited space many of you will have created archive folders to store emails away from the mailbox and free up space. These emails are held on your local machine and are not accessible to us when we migrate your emails over to your new Office365 email accounts. If you have been migrated to Office365 and can no longer see these folders on Outlook then you will need to either open the external folders again or import them into your new mailbox.
Your new Office365 accounts will have 50Gb space per mailbox, so you should have no problem importing these archived emails back into your mailbox once you have been migrated. The advantage of importing is that you will then be able to view them when you access your mailbox via the web version of Outlook.
In order to open or import your archived mail folders you will need to have set up your new Office 365 account on the Outlook client on your PC or laptop. If you can still see the archive folder in Outlook then you can continue to access the emails in this way. However, if you import it then you will be able to view the archived emails via web Outlook too. If you can’t see the archive folder anymore then you will need to either open it again or import it into your new mailbox.
Further details on how to set up your new Office 365 account on your Outlook client can be found on the following page:
Office 365 Generic Accounts - How To Access
Opening the archive folder
In Outlook:
> Click ‘File’
> Select ‘Open’
> Select ‘Open Outlook Data File’ from the displayed options.
> Locate the archive file on your PC, select it and click ‘OK’
Importing your archive/external mail folders:
If you can still see the archived folders in outlook and would now like to import them you can find out where they are stored on your PC by right clicking on the top level ( e.g. “My Outlook Data File” shown in the screen shot below ) and selecting ‘Open File Location’.
In Outlook 2010:
Follow these steps to import your archived/external mail folders into Outlook:
1. Click the File tab.
2. Click Open.
3. Click Import.
4. In the Import and Export Wizard, click Import from another program or file, and the click Next.
5. Click Outlook Data File (.pst), and then click Next.
6. Click Browse, and then choose the file to import.
Note: Under Options, it is recommended that you click Do not import duplicates unless you want the imported information to replace or duplicate items already in Outlook.
7. Click Next.
8. If a password was assigned to the Outlook Data File (.pst), you are prompted to enter the password, and then click OK.
9. Set the options for importing items. The default settings usually don’t need to be changed.
10. The top folder — usually Personal Folders, Outlook Data File, or your email address — is selected automatically.
11. Include subfolders is selected by default. All folders under the folder selected will be imported.
12. The default selection of Import items into the same folder in matches the folders from the imported file to the folders in Outlook. If a folder doesn’t exist in Outlook, it will be created.
13. Click Finish.
The archived/external emails should now have been imported back into your new mailbox.