Huge Exchange account, need to archive or switch service, best way to be sure all emails downloaded

[carmen617]

I have a new client, a small business with 3 users who are using Exchange purchased through GoDaddy. Two of the accounts have huge amounts of email on the server - pushing the 100GB limit, so they need to reduce the amount of email on the server, or else find another solution (they are open to moving to Gsuite, for example, which will let them keep as much mail on the server as they are willing to pay for, however that has its own issues). They are managing their email with Outlook through an O365 subscription. They also have full hard drives, so Outlook has only been keeping a very small portion of the email in their OST. So I recommended that they upgrade to larger hard drives, download all the mail on the server, export the mail to a PST, and delete old stuff from the server with the PST serving as an archive. I have the first computer in hand to do the job, and this user has about 500 or so folders in Outlook - she makes a new one for each client.

I have set the server settings to download all email, but I don't trust it. Every time I look and see that it says the sync is finished, I choose a random folder to open and it syncs more mail. Is there any legit and foolproof way to make Outlook download all the mail in all the folders so I can be assured of having a complete PST backup?

 

[timeshifter]

If I were in your shoes I’d

Connect their 365 account to a 3rd party cloud backup service and make sure it does full backups for a few days

Take the account away from GoDaddy and make it a direct to Microsoft tenant. I’ve done this before and have some posts about how it’s done, but I’m on my phone now else I’d link them for you.

Once you’re with Microsoft then I’d order more storage.

Note, I’m not sure how much storage you can add, I’ve only added 50GB once for a company owner.

 

[Markverhyden]

Agreed with getting them off of Godaddy. You can't have full control over M365 like you can with other vendors such as Appriver.

I've been seeing more and more of this over the years. End users are increasingly using email as a CRM tool. Yes, email is in reality a database program. With Exchange being the engine and Outlook being the client. But it's not an infallible CRM type db tool unlike others like Saleforce. It's possible that some CRM vendors may offer prepackaged setups to lower the cost of transitioning.

I'd start by working with them to understand how the use the data. I'd bet there's a sizable amount that's former customers that they want for "just in case" purposes. See what kind of data they are exchanging/using.

 

[carmen617]

If I were in your shoes I’d

Connect their 365 account to a 3rd party cloud backup service and make sure it does full backups for a few days

Take the account away from GoDaddy and make it a direct to Microsoft tenant. I’ve done this before and have some posts about how it’s done, but I’m on my phone now else I’d link them for you.

Once you’re with Microsoft then I’d order more storage.

Note, I’m not sure how much storage you can add, I’ve only added 50GB once for a company owner.

I agree with getting them off GoDaddy. However, they can't get more storage - 100GB is the current max Microsoft will allow for email, regardless of how much storage you are paying for, and they have filled it up (this mailbox is at 97GB), which is one of the reasons they called me in. I am 100% sure there is a ton of useless email in there, but it's not my job to figure out what is important to them and what isn't, it's my job to make sure they can keep working. As far as I can see, they have two options - reduce the amount of mail on the server, or migrate to GSuite rather than Microsoft, as Google doesn't care how you allocate your storage bucket, and mailboxes can be as bloated as the client wants. Either option means I have to get the mail off of Exchange.

I typically work with home users - have never used a 3rd party cloud backup service for 365 - where would you recommend I start?

 

[carmen617]

Agreed with getting them off of Godaddy. You can't have full control over M365 like you can with other vendors such as Appriver.

I've been seeing more and more of this over the years. End users are increasingly using email as a CRM tool. Yes, email is in reality a database program. With Exchange being the engine and Outlook being the client. But it's not an infallible CRM type db tool unlike others like Saleforce. It's possible that some CRM vendors may offer prepackaged setups to lower the cost of transitioning.

I'd start by working with them to understand how the use the data. I'd bet there's a sizable amount that's former customers that they want for "just in case" purposes. See what kind of data they are exchanging/using.

They are a small events business - the admin I am working with has a process where she creates a folder for each client and files all correspondence there, with subfolders for different parts of the job. Because they do events, I am sure there are tons of photo and video attachments, which is probably what is taking up so much space. Without question they have folders from clients they will never work with again, but, unlike most bloated email accounts, I can understand why they would have set up such a system, and why keeping it would be important to their business.

 

[timeshifter]

I'd be reluctant to offer the switch to G Suite. There are many users out there who will relinquish the use of Outlook only when you pry it out of their cold dead hands. G Suite is great if the user(s) is a fan and loves working with Gmail in a browser interface.

Can you use G Suite with Outlook as the client. Yes. But, you need have some middleware program that Google provides to manage the process. I works mostly OK for the handful of clients I have who use it, but none of them have mailboxes over a couple of gigabytes. I personally would want no part of supporting it with 100GB mailboxes.

Even if you can get 100GB or larger mailboxes with G Suite and they were willing to switch and use the browser, not Outlook, I wouldn't want to do that. It's just too large.

Maybe you could get them to organize their email archives, then offload stuff to PSTs and back those up. You could move all messages into yearly folders - 2021, 2020, 2019, etc. Or by business function: catering, hall rental, etc. (or whatever). Or by customer name, Acme Explosives, Widget Brothers, Inc., etc.

For backup I use Cove. It's formerly Solarwinds and N-Able. I use it for 365 because I was already using it for server and workstation backups for multiple clients.

 

[carmen617]

Maybe you could get them to organize their email archives, then offload stuff to PSTs and back those up. You could move all messages into yearly folders - 2021, 2020, 2019, etc. Or by business function: catering, hall rental, etc. (or whatever). Or by customer name, Acme Explosives, Widget Brothers, Inc., etc.


That's the plan, the problem is actually forcing Outlook to download all the emails in the folders so I can back them up into a PST, and then they can be safely removed from the server. Even though I have told Outlook to download all emails, it doesn't want to download the emails in folders without actually clicking in each individual folder. There are literally hundreds of folders and subfolders, and I really don't want to have to systematically click in each one. There is a legit way to force Thunderbird to download every email from the server, does anybody know if there is a way to make Outlook do that?

 

[HCHTech]

Maybe you could get them to organize their email archives, then offload stuff to PSTs and back those up. You could move all messages into yearly folders - 2021, 2020, 2019, etc. Or by business function: catering, hall rental, etc. (or whatever). Or by customer name, Acme Explosives, Widget Brothers, Inc., etc.

Yes - once you get this sorted, get some sort of automatic archive system in place. There is no solution that will enable their "keep everything forever" way of working. O365 archiving preferably, or just do it in Outlook if you've got storage space. I'm surprised that the whole thing hasn't collapsed under it's own weight by now.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Our "go to license" for our clients is M365 Business Premium. It has the 50 gig max mailbox, which you can add an Exchange Online Plan 2 license to which brings the mailbox to 100 gigs. So you likely already did the EOP2 or...have an E3.
However with M365 Business Premium comes the "unlimited archive"...which, technically is not unlimited, but..1.5TB of archive.

I'd avoid the archaic PST approach

 

[carmen617]

Our "go to license" for our clients is M365 Business Premium. It has the 50 gig max mailbox, which you can add an Exchange Online Plan 2 license to which brings the mailbox to 100 gigs. So you likely already did the EOP2 or...have an E3.
However with M365 Business Premium comes the "unlimited archive"...which, technically is not unlimited, but..1.5TB of archive.

I'd avoid the archaic PST approach

Can you explain the unlimited archive? I looked it up and got lost. Since they have 100GB already does that mean they have access to the unlimited archive? And how do they use it?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Can you explain the unlimited archive? I looked it up and got lost. Since they have 100GB already does that mean they have access to the unlimited archive? And how do they use it?

In 365 you can create a rule to "auto archive"...and you can customize that rule. Say, all email older than 2 years, or all 3mail older than 3 or 5 years. The mailbox will look through all it's folders under the inbox, and move them to the archive. You can access that archive within Outlook "while online" (it won't create an offline OST).

So if their mail is 96 gigs, and they've had email for 10 years, it say you make the rule for all email over 3 years, it will find all email older than 3 years...and say that is worth 60 gigs right there, it will auto move the 60 gigs of old email to the archive, so their inbox will go down to 36 gigs.

Archive shows as another folder under your account in Outlook on the left side.
It mirrors any folder structure you create under the inbox...all email stays within the folders you created.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

From Tony....

Microsoft Caps Exchange Online’s “Unlimited Archive” at 1.5 TB

On November 1, Microsoft will limit auto-expanding archives to 1.5 TB and bring the era of "bottomless archiving" to an end. The new limit might not affect many Exchange Online tenants.

practical365.com

 

[timeshifter]

Archive shows as another folder under your account in Outlook on the left side.

Sounds similar to how I recall seeing Outlook do that in the past. There would be an archive.pst and it would be attached to the profile, showing up as an item on the left. Auto archive was an Outlook feature.

Am I remembering that correctly?

So having 365 do it is essentially the same thing, but on the server side?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Sounds similar to how I recall seeing Outlook do that in the past. There would be an archive.pst and it would be attached to the profile, showing up as an item on the left. Auto archive was an Outlook feature.

Am I remembering that correctly?

So having 365 do it is essentially the same thing, but on the server side?

Yeah it's done on the server side now, per mailbox. Just no PST or OST, it shows up only when connected online. For the M365bp version.