abnet
New Member
- Outlook version
- Outlook 2016 32 bit
- Email Account
- Office 365 Exchange
I need to test and confirm best way to take backups of Outlook email account folders so that they can subsequently be imported back into Outlook and the user can then read all the old emails without connecting to the email account when it is later deleted from the remote mail server. The whys and hows of this are explained in detail much lower down in this post, so that (hopefully!) anyone with more time and patience can read exactly what I am trying to achieve, and maybe offer better advice or options!
The initial problem I have encountered is as follows. I previously set up a test account on within my Outlook 365 (2016 - 32 bit) using IMAP protocol. I sent and received some emails, and also created a custom folder and moved some emails to that. I then deleted the associated email account at the server end. I then confirmed that the emails for that account could still be viewed within Outlook, albeit that Outlook repeatedly pops up the mail account username/password box (as it can no longer find the email account on the remote mail server). I assumed a workaround to that particular annoyance would be to export the old IMAP account to a .pst file, remove the original account from Outlook, and then reinstate it from the previously exported file in .pst format. HOWEVER, this has not worked as I hoped. Here’s breakdown of the steps I followed:
Further background info and request for suggestions/advice:
I run a web design company from home, but we also host loads of our customers domains and email accounts via a reseller hosting service we use. Many of our older customer accounts are hosted on an old Windows server which my host has advised they are going to have to shut down. I already have access to an alternative new shared server and am therefore midway through the process of moving lots of my customers email accounts from one server to another. Email accounts on the new server are connected via a totally different mail server host address, so this has required that I set up new versions of each customer's email accounts (with same email address) on the new mail server. I have then had to instruct the customers to set up their email account within their mail apps again - as if it was a new account and with the new mail server settings. The benefit of this is that they can work with emails on the old and new server during the transition process. All good so far!
However, the old server is going to be decommissioned within next 3 weeks, so I now need to alert my customers to this and want to give them some guidance for what they can do to either backup/export copies of their old account’s emails, or migrate some across to the new version of their account. This is hard enough to offer advice on, as there are a mixture of some using POP and some IMAP for the old version of their accounts, and they are obviously using various different operating systems, devices, and email apps.
However, as I am a long time Outlook user, and I know that many of our customers also use Outlook, I hoped I could at least offer some guidance for backing up and re-opening their old account’s emails in Outlook. I assumed that suggesting they export their old email account to a .pst file would be best suggestion as you can apparently do that with an existing data file that is in .pst format, or with the newer .ost format as used for IMAP accounts. So I decided to test this today, and above sums up the first problem I encountered.
So, apart from any advice re my specific problem as described in the steps above, if anyone can suggest some better general advice or methods I should point my customers to for backing up their existing emails before we delete the associated email accounts off the old mail server, I will be extremely grateful for that.
And if you've read all the way down to here, thanks very much for your time and patience
The initial problem I have encountered is as follows. I previously set up a test account on within my Outlook 365 (2016 - 32 bit) using IMAP protocol. I sent and received some emails, and also created a custom folder and moved some emails to that. I then deleted the associated email account at the server end. I then confirmed that the emails for that account could still be viewed within Outlook, albeit that Outlook repeatedly pops up the mail account username/password box (as it can no longer find the email account on the remote mail server). I assumed a workaround to that particular annoyance would be to export the old IMAP account to a .pst file, remove the original account from Outlook, and then reinstate it from the previously exported file in .pst format. HOWEVER, this has not worked as I hoped. Here’s breakdown of the steps I followed:
- I checked I could still see and read all emails in all the folders of my test IMAP email account within my copy of Outlook 365. I could, but on clicking on any email it pops up the mail user/password verification box. This is expected as the account no longer exists on the mail server. But I want to avoid that annoying password box popping up so continued as follows...
- I used Outlook 365’s Export option to export all of the folders for that IMAP account as a .pst file. (I was careful to select the very top folder which named the specific IMAP account, and selected to include all sub-folders). I noted that once saved, the backed up .pst file said it was 41,433KB in size so was confident it had saved all of the emails within it.
- I went to remove the original .ost DATA file (from within Outlooks window listing data files and email accounts), but when I tried to remove it, it said “This file is associated with an email account, so you must remove the email account”.
- I removed the email account and it automatically removed the associated data file as well.
- Before continuing, and to be on safe side I then closed and reopened Outlook.
- I opened Outlook and selected File> Open & Export> Open Outlook Data file. I then selected the .pst file, as previously saved in step 2.
- It now displayed it on lower left side as “Outlook Data file” and all of the folders including the previously added custom folders were there.
- HOWEVER, when I look in any of the folders they are all empty - NONE of the emails are there!
- I tried removing the data file, and instead adding it by going to Manage Profiles> Data files - and adding it that way, but it is just the same as described in steps 7 & 8.
Further background info and request for suggestions/advice:
I run a web design company from home, but we also host loads of our customers domains and email accounts via a reseller hosting service we use. Many of our older customer accounts are hosted on an old Windows server which my host has advised they are going to have to shut down. I already have access to an alternative new shared server and am therefore midway through the process of moving lots of my customers email accounts from one server to another. Email accounts on the new server are connected via a totally different mail server host address, so this has required that I set up new versions of each customer's email accounts (with same email address) on the new mail server. I have then had to instruct the customers to set up their email account within their mail apps again - as if it was a new account and with the new mail server settings. The benefit of this is that they can work with emails on the old and new server during the transition process. All good so far!
However, the old server is going to be decommissioned within next 3 weeks, so I now need to alert my customers to this and want to give them some guidance for what they can do to either backup/export copies of their old account’s emails, or migrate some across to the new version of their account. This is hard enough to offer advice on, as there are a mixture of some using POP and some IMAP for the old version of their accounts, and they are obviously using various different operating systems, devices, and email apps.
However, as I am a long time Outlook user, and I know that many of our customers also use Outlook, I hoped I could at least offer some guidance for backing up and re-opening their old account’s emails in Outlook. I assumed that suggesting they export their old email account to a .pst file would be best suggestion as you can apparently do that with an existing data file that is in .pst format, or with the newer .ost format as used for IMAP accounts. So I decided to test this today, and above sums up the first problem I encountered.
So, apart from any advice re my specific problem as described in the steps above, if anyone can suggest some better general advice or methods I should point my customers to for backing up their existing emails before we delete the associated email accounts off the old mail server, I will be extremely grateful for that.
And if you've read all the way down to here, thanks very much for your time and patience
