Upgrading Business Standard to Exchange online Plan 2 (For storage)

[thecomputerguy]

In the past when a mailbox was getting full I'd bump them up to E3 for the 100GB of storage. I became aware this year that I can keep the user on Business Standard and just swap the Exchange license to Plan 2 for the 100GB of storage and save the $3 a month instead of moving to E3? ($12.50 + $8 = $20.5 ) vs ($23)

I'm just a little weary of doing this because I haven't done it before.

Is all I have to do is purchase a license for Exchange Online Plan 2, then it will show up as an available unchecked license here and then uncheck Exchange Online (Plan 1) and then check the box that says Exchange Online (Plan 2)?





Will the Exchange Online (Plan 1) then show up in the "Your Products" here?









And then I can cancel it?

Thanks!

@callthatgirl @YeOldeStonecat

 

[nlinecomputers]

Yep

 

[callthatgirl]

That's what I do sometimes. Often a client wants all their email downloaded so I have them buy another mbx for $4.00 and shovel all the old stuff there.

 

[thecomputerguy]

That's what I do sometimes. Often a client wants all their email downloaded so I have them buy another mbx for $4.00 and shovel all the old stuff there.

Can you elaborate on this?

Do you manually export and import the data into a new mailbox or do you migwiz it in?

Like a user has joe@contoso.com and you setup a joearchive@contoso.com?

Is this for people that do not want to enable archiving?

Is there a way to do this with a shared mailbox instead?

I'm trying to understand the purpose of this.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yes...except I don't believe the online Plan 1 will show up in your list of avail products once you replace with P2. It's a component of "standard"....and you're replacing it with P2....but...P1 won't show up to be available to use somewhere else. It just gets...flushed down the toilet.

It's simply an upgrade of the same mailbox....say the end user has 48 gigs of email with only 2 gigs left to grow, across 47 sub folders in his/her inbox....you tack on an Exch P2 license and pull the P1 license, now that same 48 gig mailbox has 52 gigs of free space to grow. No migration, no data lost at all...all the same email that was there before is still there.

Auto archiving...great feature, just set it up and the Exchange server does the work...say you set the archive rule to move all email > 3 years old to the archive, it automatically does that on the back end. Now the user sees another folder in their Outlook, the archive, and any email > 3 years old has been moved over to it. Mirroring the exact folder structure it was in..if the user organized emails by sub folders.

Shared mailbox is a way to archive email from an employee that is no longer there (they got fired, or retired, or they quit, whatever). The mailbox stays functional, still receives email, just..doesn't need a license anymore, and you can give multiple users rights to view that mailbox in their Outlook...to monitor for incoming email.

Shared mailboxes are also a way to have some neutral, purposeful mailbox, like..."info@thecomputerguy.com" or "jobs@thecomputerguy.com"...no license needed, and you have have several licensed users monitor that mailbox. They'll automatically see it in their Outlook.

 

[callthatgirl]

What is easiest is buy the mbx, name it lisaarchive@ctg.biz or something like that. Then it's only for storage. Add to Outlook. Then I always make a backup of the current mbx just in case...then you can move data out of the current mailbox to the other one down below. Let upload to the cloud.

Each account can store 50 gigs in Outlook, as they have their own OST. It's a huge win for my clients who are email maniacs. My last project, I had 9 mbx setup, with 75-90 gigs in each one. Changed the slider in all 9 accounts to 2 weeks, search was perfect lol. Project took 3 months to complete, billed $5k.

 

[callthatgirl]

And yes, some clients have a hard time with in-place archive. It's slow and confusing for them. They want their data managed their way and as I'm break/fix, I'll do just about anything technically possible for them.

 

[brandonkick]

And yes, some clients have a hard time with in-place archive. It's slow and confusing for them. They want their data managed their way and as I'm break/fix, I'll do just about anything technically possible for them.

That's the main reason I went with exchange plan 2 as opposed to letting it stay the standard plan 1, and use the archive feature.

If it's slow, or any degree of difficulty to navigate or find the mail they want to find... they would not be ok with it. The solution? Tell them to spend the $8 a month and double up on your standard mailbox size (50GB --> 100GB)

 

[callthatgirl]

In Outlook, you can add the new storage mbx and have it under the main account. Works pretty good, the only issue I have seen is when clients want to Frankenstein their systems with Google and Exchange. Example: Google Workspace has to be primary, then add in Exchange. Then 2 issues can happen but I have learned how to fix those problems.

If you have 2 exchange accounts and the clients are searchers, then just download all the mail from each mbx, change the search feature to be "All Outlook" and it will search everything.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

That's the main reason I went with exchange plan 2 as opposed to letting it stay the standard plan 1, and use the archive feature.

If it's slow, or any degree of difficulty to navigate or find the mail they want to find... they would not be ok with it. The solution? Tell them to spend the $8 a month and double up on your standard mailbox size (50GB --> 100GB)

Auto archive....It's automatic, I don't see it as "slow" at all. The initial "move" can take a day-ish...but once done, it's a constant trickle that is immediate. Any emails older than "X years"...gets moved to it...right at the hour that the email turns X years old.

Folder structure is automatically mirrored. So email move from <name of folder under the inbox>...to...<same folder under inbox in archive>. So it really keeps it simple for the end user. Outlooks search still finds it in the archive, so long as..naturally, Outlooks search is set to all Outlook items, or the archive, and not just the main mailbox. The email server manages it all. That's what's nice about treating Microsoft 365 like a business platform, and using the admin tools and features. "automate it all!". Don't treat it like outlook express on snet.net.

Now....I want you to really think about this for a minute. Say a user has, oh, 38 gigs of email in their mailbox. Spread across about 75 sub folders under their inbox. Each of those sub folders could have a few dozen or hundreds of emails under them. Picture the "manual" archive process here! Picture it realistically. End users going in and finding old emails, and moving them to the archive. And..end users doing that on a regular basis! And staying on top of it, so their main mailbox doesn't fill up again...resulting in a call to you..."oh, well, you haven't been moving old stuff to the archive, have you? Hmmmmm..." My gosh, I'd rather mow my lawn with a toenail clippers! I'd rather paint the golden gate bridge with a toothbrush!

And, another mailbox..another backup license to purchase too...added to the cost.

 

[brandonkick]

Auto archive....It's automatic, I don't see it as "slow" at all. The initial "move" can take a day-ish...but once done, it's a constant trickle that is immediate. Any emails older than "X years"...gets moved to it...right at the hour that the email turns X years old.

Folder structure is automatically mirrored. So email move from <name of folder under the inbox>...to...<same folder under inbox in archive>. So it really keeps it simple for the end user. Outlooks search still finds it in the archive, so long as..naturally, Outlooks search is set to all Outlook items, or the archive, and not just the main mailbox. The email server manages it all. That's what's nice about treating Microsoft 365 like a business platform, and using the admin tools and features. "automate it all!". Don't treat it like outlook express on snet.net.

Now....I want you to really think about this for a minute. Say a user has, oh, 38 gigs of email in their mailbox. Spread across about 75 sub folders under their inbox. Each of those sub folders could have a few dozen or hundreds of emails under them. Picture the "manual" archive process here! Picture it realistically. End users going in and finding old emails, and moving them to the archive. And..end users doing that on a regular basis! And staying on top of it, so their main mailbox doesn't fill up again...resulting in a call to you..."oh, well, you haven't been moving old stuff to the archive, have you? Hmmmmm..." My gosh, I'd rather mow my lawn with a toenail clippers! I'd rather paint the golden gate bridge with a toothbrush!

And, another mailbox..another backup license to purchase too...added to the cost.

Your 100% right. This is basically "problem avoidance" but really all it's doing is kicking the can further down the road. Be it for me or someone else to deal with.


These mailboxes do grow at a significant rate, it's likely only a matter of time before they can't just pay their way out of the fact that they can't just "keep it all" in the regular storage.