2018-02-22

Many professionals today depends upon Microsoft Outlook as their center of the workflow. Many of you may be unaware that Outlook stores emails, appointments, tasks, contacts, notes, journals, etc. in two locations – one is the personal storage table (.pst) file on your hard disk and the other is in a mailbox located on the server (when using Outlook with Microsoft Exchange Server). Today we would be covering a method to import PST File from Outlook 2010 to Office 365. Also, we would recommend you to use a tool that is an alternative to Azure Azcopy that would help you move Outlook emails to O365.

For a professional who has precious data on emails needs a periodical backup of PST data in case of a PST file corruption. In general, the user needs a PST backup file in cases such as

  • If you want to migrate emails from one email account to other
  • If the emails are inaccessible due to corruption
  • If you are moving Outlook from one PC to another system

To import PST file from Outlook 2010 to Office 365 account using a manual method then the user can move the entire or selective data of Outlook to another Outlook version (say 2016). The stages to migrate PST data to Office 365 have two stages Lets look at the process below to import Outlook 2010 PST to Outlook 2016.

Step 1: Export Outlook data to Outlook.pst

To export mailbox data to an Outlook .pst file, follow the steps given below:

  1. Launch your MS Outlook 2010 application.
  2. On the topmost ribbon of MS Outlook, go to the File Tab. Click Options>Advanced>Export.
    import pst to office 365 account via outlook
  3. From Import and Export wizard, select Export to a file. Click Next.
  4. In the next Export to a file wizard, select Outlook Data File (.pst) and click Next.
  5. Select the email account name you need to export. To export the entire PST data, select the checkbox Include Subfolders. Click Next.
  6. You can export a single folder also by selecting that particular folder. In this case, you have to clear the Include subfolders check box. Click Next to import PST file from Outlook 2010 to Office 365 

    Note: You cannot select more than one folder to export. To export another folder, you have to perform the whole process again, i.e., a single folder or whole mailbox can be exported at a time. Here, only Inbox folder is selected to export to a .pst file or to have a backup of inbox items. One more option is available to apply Filter to select particular items from the folder. With advanced filters, you can select important emails from your folder.

  7. In Export Outlook Data File wizard, Browse and select the required location to export your file. You can select the required option. Click Finish to continue.
  8. After this, a dialogue box is popped up asking for the password (if you have set a password for PST file or when you are creating a new .pst file). Insert password and click OK. Your file will get saved to the selected location. Select checkbox. Your password is saved for future use.

Step 2: Move PST file to Outlook 2016

Import Outlook 2010 .pst file into Outlook 2016 using the given steps:

  1. Launch MS Outlook 2016 application.
  2. Go to the File Tab. Click Open & Export>Import/Export.
  3. From Import and Export wizard, select Import from another program or file.
  4. Select file type as Outlook data file (.pst). Click Next.
  5. Click Browse to provide the location of the .pst file to be imported. Click on the required option and click Next.
  6. Select the particular folder or select include all subfolders. You can apply Filter if selecting a single folder. Click Finish to complete the process.

Using Export/Import wizard of MS Outlook to migrate the PST data is helpful but not completely successful. The drawbacks include time-consumption and less effectiveness. Slight mistake in the procedure may lead to the corruption of file. Manual and free methods seem quite alluring, but a small mistake might risk your data perhaps the process to import PST file from Outlook 2010 to Office 365 may fail terribly. 

A Quick Solution

This manual method to import PST file from Outlook 2010 to Office 365 would take a lot of time if in case you have a lot of emails and other data. It’s better to use some automated tool that can do this work in a fast way. Office 365 Importer is one of the best tools that can move PST to Office 365 account very easily. This tool eliminates all such risks and saves PST data in Office 365 account. One of the exclusive features of Office 365 Importer Tool is an Incremental import that would let the returning user move only the data that is new. In other words, you get free from selecting and deselecting the data items and import Outlook 2010 PST to Office 365 account.  

Office365Import PST tool is one of the alternatives to Microsoft Azure Azcopy tool to move Outlook data to the cloud. Azure Azcopy is one of the overrated tool that has a very complicated process to import Outlook data. According to a research, many of the professionals won’t use this because of its lengthy process and PowerShell failure.

Verdict

We know that the number of Outlook 2010 user is more than any other version of Outlook. Hence we have covered a method to import PST file from Outlook 2010 to Office 365. But this method even works to move data from other versions of Outlook 2007 / 2013 / 2016 as well. The manual method to move Outlook data file is slow and outdated so you even can use an automated solution

About the author 

Lily Martin