Best Method for Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Migration

  •  Dhruv Sharma
  • Published on:  August 3rd, 2022
  • Updated on:  October 12, 2023
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Summary: This article provides practical solutions for Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration. You can either go with the manual process or use a secure Office 365 Migration Tool to accomplish this task. However, the manual process requires technical knowledge of the Microsoft 365 portal and its services which makes it quite complex for non-technical users. Therefore, this article covers both approaches so that you can easily perform Office 365 cross-tenant migration.

Office 365 tenant to tenant Migration is a process that allows you to move the Exchange Online mailboxes from one tenant to another. This is a common requirement during mergers and divestitures. Before starting migration, you need to ensure that users migrating must be available in the destination Exchange Online system. Also, it is marked with some specific attributes that allow the Office 365 Tenant to Tenant Migration.

This article sheds light on the process of preparing the source and the target tenants for Exchange online mailbox migration. It’s always important to have the best cloud data migration strategy to perform the secure Office 365 cross-tenant migration. So, without any further delay, let’s dive into the process of Microsoft Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration.

Prerequisites for Cross-Tenant Mailbox Migration

Before starting the process of moving from one Office 365 tenant to another, you need to prepare source and target tenants. Following are the prerequisites that you need to fulfill for successfully migrating the user mailbox data.

  • You will need to get the appropriate permissions to set up the Move mailbox application in Azure, EXO Migration Endpoint, and the EXO Organization Relationship.
  • One mail-enabled security group must be present in the source tenant. Source tenant admins can use this method to scope mailbox moves and prevent the migration of unintended users.
  • Obtain the Microsoft 365 tenant ID of your trusted partner company with whom you are performing this migration. It is required in the Organization Relationship DomainName field.

Configuration Stages to Enable Your Tenants for Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Migration

Once you have all the prerequisites, you can start configuring the target tenant first. The whole process is further divided into three stages.

  • Create migration applications and secret-target tenant preparation.
  • Create Exchange Online migration endpoint and organization relationship – Target tenant preparation.
  • Accept the migration application and configure the organization relationship – Source tenant preparation.

Also, in some instances, users find this migration process complicated so they prefer to backup the Office 365 mailbox to PST format.

Stage 1: Create Migration Application and secret-target Tenant Preparation

This is the first stage where you have to create a migration application and secret using the Azure AD portal. To initiate this process, you need to sign in with your target tenant admin credentials. This whole stage is further subdivided into the following steps that you need to perform using Azure AD Portal.

  • Create the Migration Application from the App Registrations wizard.
  • Change and Add Mailbox. Migration permission.
  • Create a Client Secret for this migration application.
  • Grant admin consent to the application.

Azure AD is a cloud-based identity and access management solution that manages various on-premises infrastructure components and systems. It Utilizes a single identity per user, which determines that each person is only responsible for managing their own identity.

After confirming the acceptance, you can prepare the URL to share with your source tenant. Now, the source tenant has to accept the application to allow mailbox migration.

To Know more Visit: How to prepare the target tenant by creating the migration application and secret?

Stage 2: Create Exchange Online Migration Endpoint and Organization Relationship – Target Tenant Preparation

Once you have completed stage 1, you can create the Exchange Online Migration Endpoint by connecting to Exchange Online Powershell in the target tenant. You will need the application ID of the mailbox migration app and the password (secret) that you have created in stage 1. Then, you can either create a new organization relationship object or edit your existing one to point to your source tenant.

To Know more Visit: Prepare the target tenant by creating the Exchange Online migration endpoint and organization relationship

Stage 3: Accept the Migration Application and Configure the Organization Relationship – Source Tenant Preparation

In this stage, prepare the source tenant and accept the migration application. For this, you need to visit the URL from your browser that is shared by the target tenant. Now, a popup appears that accepts the mailbox migration application and creates a new or edit the existing organization relationship object. Remember that this relationship object is created for your target (destination) tenant in Exchange Online.

To Know more Visit: Prepare the source tenant by accepting the migration application and configuring the organization relationship

At last, you can verify the Office 365 Tenant to Tenant Migration by running the Test-MigrationServerAvailability cmdlet against the migration endpoint created on the target tenant.

Direct Method to Migrate from One Tenant to Another in Office 365

It is evident that the above manual process is extremely complex to understand as well as perform. It also required technical expertise to perform the cross-tenant mailbox migration in Office 365. Therefore, it is not advisable to attempt manual migration unless you have a highly skilled technical person available to perform the task. In this regard, experts also recommend using a secure and reliable tool. And some experts recommend the Cigati Office 365 Migration Tool which is compatible for both technical and non-technical users. Apart from this, it also provides built-in features that help to ease the Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration.

office 365 tenant to tenant migration

Why use the Cigati Office 365 Migration Tool for Cross Tenant Mailbox Migration?

Below are some of the main reasons why experts have recommended opting for the Cigati Office 365 Migration Tool to perform Office 365 Tenant to Tenant Migration.

  1. This software makes the whole migration process easy and ensures high data integrity during the migration from one tenant to another.
  2. You can easily export all the tenant account data, including Emails, Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Categories, and documents.
  3. It offers the option to migrate the Mailbox, In-place Archive, and public folder from one tenant account to another.
  4. Additionally, you can opt for the advanced feature of the mail filter option to select the specific folders for optimizing the migration process.
  5. This utility is superiorly designed and developed with the latest algorithms that make it compatible with all versions of Windows OS.

In contrast, this software is a complete package for Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration. Also, it provides the facility to migrate Office 365 email to Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Thunderbird, AOL, and other popular email clients. You can try its free trial version to analyze and experience its advanced functionalities.

Conclusion

An Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration is a complex task that requires technical expertise. Fortunately, we have an Office 365 Migration Tool that makes the tenant-to-tenant migration a pretty straightforward process. In this blog, we have covered both approaches (manual and automated), and we hope that this article helped you in successful tenant-to-tenant migration in Office 365.

FAQ’s

1: How will you perform O365 tenant-to-tenant mailbox migration?

Answer: You can perform the following steps for the O365 tenant-to-tenant mailbox migration process.

  1. Download and Run the Office 365 Migration Tool.
  2. Select the Backup option and then enter the O365 credentials of the source tenant.
  3. Now, check on the Mailbox option from the Select Backup Option.
  4. This wizard will show you the tree structure of your source tenant mailbox data.
  5. Select the desired folder and click on the Next button.
  6. In this wizard, select Office 365 from the dropdown menu of the Saves/Backup/Migrate As option.
  7. Now, enter the credentials of the destination O365 tenant account. Then hit the Sign In button.
  8. After selecting the advanced options, click the Convert button to start the Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration.

2: Can you migrate a shared mailbox to Office 365?

Answer: Microsoft allows users to convert the shared mailbox to a user mailbox within the same Office 365 tenant. After converting it into a user mailbox, you can easily migrate the shared mailbox data to Office 365. Perform the following steps that help you to convert the shared mailbox to a user mailbox.

  1. Firstly, log in to Office 365 as an administrator. Then, navigate to the Admin Center and select the Exchange option.
  2. Now, select the Shared Mailbox from the Recipients option. Then, click on the Convert option under Convert to the regular mailbox.
  3. In the end, click on Yes to confirm. It will take some time.
  4. Remember that you need to assign a license and reset the password for this converted mailbox.

3: What are the types of Office 365 migration?

Answer: There are mainly 4 types of Office 365 migration.

  1. Staged Migration: Allows users to migrate user mailboxes from on-premise Exchange to Office 365 in batches. It only works when your source email is Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
  2. Cutover Migration: It provides a facility to move the contents of user mailboxes from on-premises Exchange to Office 365, all at one time. It works with the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or later.
  3. Hybrid Migration: Hybrid Migration allows you to integrate Office 365 with your on-premises Exchange servers. Using this migration type, you can easily synchronize and manage user accounts in both environments.
  4. IMAP Migration: Apart from the above three migration types, it allows users to migrate data from Gmail or any other IMAP-supported email system to an Office 365 cloud-based environment.

About The Author:

Dhruv is a tech-savvy writer, with a keen interest in creating content for technology websites. As a technical content writer, he often writes about Data Migration, Backup & Recovery, and other similar topics. Dhruv spends most of his time researching and writing about creativity, technology, and digital marketing trends.

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