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Exporting PST files from Microsoft 365 In-place Archive

Overview

The In-Place Archive is a popular feature of M365 where old mails for end users are held. Mails are pushed to the In-place archive either via retention policies, or manually when a user's mailbox quota is reached.

To extract the contents of the In-place archive, a two step process has to be followed, 

a. Fire Search requests

b. Export the search results.

Once the Exported PST files are available, then can be downloaded to an OneDrive from where they can be copied to a Vaultastic Store.

The steps for uploading the contents from the in-place archive for selected or all users to a Vaultastic Open / Deep store is as documented below

Step 1: One-time setup for e-Discovery Access

1: Log in to your M365 account using the credentials of your M365 admin account.

2: Navigate to the Admin Center and select Security

3: Under Permissions, Select Roles from the Email & Collaboration Roles section.

4: Select eDiscovery Manager and edit the definition. 

5: Choose the eDiscovery Manager & Choose the eDiscovery Administrator. 

In the wizard, choose the eDiscovery Manager and Administrator. (It is recommended that the manager and administrator roles are assigned to the M365 Admin used for login)

Save the changes.


Step 2: Calculate the size of the In-place Archive Data and define the number of Search/Export requests

1: Navigate to the Compliance Admin Center.

2: Navigate to the Content Search section and click on New Search. 

Note: If the Content Search option is not visible, go back to the previous step and review the definition of the eDiscovery Manager.


3: Give a suitable name and description to the new search. For example, the search name can be "Vaultastic - In-place Archive Data Size". Click Next


4: In the Locations section, select Exchange mailboxes. Keep the Default setting for "All" in the included section.


5: In the Conditions section, select the Query builder 

Click Add condition and select Date


Choose the operator Before option and select todays date. Click Next.


6: Review and submit

Review the name, location and search criteria for the search. Click Submit


7: Monitor progress by clicking on the search

The newly submitted search will be visible under Content Search. Click on it to view the status. The Search statistics will be available in a few minutes, depending on the size of your in-place archive

The results will show you the total size of the in-place Archive.

In the Actions menu, select Export results, if the total size is above your export limit, you will get a prompt with the limt available to you. In which case, you will have to split the search requests as mentioned in Step 3.

If you are within limits, follow instructions in Step 4. 


Step 3: Make data Export ready 

Since the export size for a single job is restricted, depending on the total size, you will have to split the search into multiple requests. It is recommended that you use the date filter to filter out data transacted in different time periods. You could choose to split for each month, year etc. 

Multiple search requests will have to be added  using the instructions given in Step 2 above.

Be sure to name each search appropriately.


Step 4: Submit Export requests

1: Navigate to the Content Search section in the Compliance Admin Center

2: Click on the Content Search jobs executed in the previous step.

3: From the Actions menu, select Export results.


In the pop-up, select "All items, excluding..." as the Output option, and in the Export Content as, select One PST for each mailbox.

Click Export.

The Export may take a few days depending on the size of the data to be exported and the number of users in your domain.

You will receive an email alert when the export is ready to be downloaded.


Step 5: Download the exported contents to a suitable folder on an OneDrive with sufficient storage space


1. Navigate to the Export tab and select the export object.


2. Copy the key to the clipboard


3. Click on download results.The microsoft ediscovery tool will be downloaded to your desktop. 



Once the download of the tool is complete, a pop-up will show up.

In the pop-up, paste the export key and select the destination location by clicking the Browse button

Hit the Start button



IMPORTANT NOTES:

  • If the exported data is to be uploaded to a Vaultastic Store, it is recommended that the destination should be a folder mapped on the OneDrive application on your desktop. This will enable cloud to cloud transfer of data from OneDrive to Vaultastic

  • To be able to view the OneDrive folder in the browse option, make sure you have configured the OneDrive windows application on your desktop with your M365 credentials


Step 6: Use LegacyFlo Request Type OneDrive-S3-Zip to upload data to a Vaultastic Store

  • Navigate to LegacyFlo
  • Select the OneDrive-S3-Zip request type. 
  • In the destination, choose File as the Doc Type. This option will copy all the PST files from OneDrive to the Vaultastic Store.