Archiving Emails from Microsoft Office 365

This tutorial only covers the specifics of archiving from Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes. It is assumed that you already have a MailStore Server installation or test installation and are familiar with the fundamentals of MailStore Server. Please refer to the Quick Start Guide for more information.

MailStore Server offers several ways to archive emails from Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes, which are described below. If you are not sure which archiving method best suits your company, please refer to chapter Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy.

Important notice

Dependent on your Office 365 plan, some archiving methods might not be usable in MailStore. The methods described under Archiving Multiple Office 365 Mailboxes Centrally and Archiving Incoming and Outgoing Emails Directly require functions that are only available in certain Office 365 plans.

Synchronizing Users

If you synchronize your Office 365 environment with an on premise Active Directory, it is recommended to set up a synchronization as described in chapter Active Directory Integration of the MailStore Server manual.

Archiving Individual Office 365 Mailboxes

Setting Up the Archiving Process

For each mailbox, please proceed as follows:

Unless the mailbox of the current user is to be archived into his or her own user archive, log on to MailStore Client as MailStore administrator. Only an administrator can archive emails for other users.
Click on Archive Email.
From the Email Servers list in the Create Profile area of the window, select Microsoft Exchange to create a new archiving profile.
A wizard opens to assist in specifying the archiving settings.
Select Single Mailbox.

Under Access via, select HTTPS.

As Office 365 uses trusted certificates, the option Ignore SSL Warnings can be deselected.

Under Host, enter the name of the Office 365 Exchange server, usually outlook.office365.com.

If you do not know the host name, you can find it out by using the MailStore Exchange Autodiscover Tool.

Under User Name, enter the Office 365 user name of the user whose emails are to be archived.

Alternatively, any user with the appropriate access permissions for the mailbox to be archived can be specified. In this case, it is imperative that this mailbox is specified under Mailbox (see below).

Under Password, enter the user’s Office 365 password.
As long as the user’s email address matches his or her Office 365 user name, the field Mailbox must be left blank. Otherwise, the user’s primary email address has to be entered here.
Click on Test to verify that MailStore can access the mailbox.
Click on Next.
If needed, adjust the settings for the List of Folders to be Archived, the filter and the Deletion Rules. By default, no emails will be deleted from the mailbox. The Timeout value only has to be adjusted in specific cases (e.g. with a very slow Internet connection).

Click on Next to continue.
If logged on to MailStore Server as MailStore administrator, the Target Archive can be specified. Select the archive of the user for whom the selected mailbox is to be archived. If the user does not exist yet, click on Create a New User.

Click on Next.
In the last step, a name for the archiving profile can be specified. After clicking Finish, the archiving profile will be listed under Saved Profiles and can be run immediately, if desired.

More information on how to execute archiving profiles can be found under the topic Email Archiving with MailStore Basics

Archiving Multiple Office 365 Mailboxes Centrally

With MailStore, some or all mailboxes of Microsoft Office 365 can be archived in a single step. All necessary preparations, such as creating MailStore users, can be made automatically. The archiving process can be executed manually or automatically according to a schedule.

Important notice

Please make sure that the feature ApplicationImpersonation, which is required in order to archive multiple Office 365 mailboxes in a single step, is available in your Office 365 plan.

Step 1: Setting up a central user for accessing mailboxes

Before the archiving process can be set up in MailStore, you have to create a user that has access to all mailboxes. Afterwards follow these steps, to grant access permissions to the newly created user on all mailboxes:

Log into Microsoft’s Online Portal with your Office 365 admin account.
Click on Admin and select Exchange from the drop down menu.
Navigate to Permissions.
Under admin roles select + (New).

Enter a meaningful name and description for the new role group.
Under Roles add the role ApplicationImpersonation.
Under Members add the user you want to give permission to access all mailboxes.
Click on Save to create a new role group.

Step 2: Configuration of MailStore Server

Please proceed as follows:

Log on to MailStore Client as administrator.
Click on Archive Email.
From the Email Servers list in the Create Profile area of the window, select Microsoft Exchange to create a new archiving profile.
A wizard opens to assist in specifying the archiving settings.
Select Multiple Mailboxes.

Important notice

In order to be able to archive multiple mailboxes, some MailStore users along with their email addresses have to exist in the MailStore user management. If this is not the case, MailStore will offer to set up and execute the Active Directory Synchronization at this point. Once completed, the wizard will resume. If Active Directory Synchronization is not desired, the process can be canceled. In this case, users have to be created manually as described the in chapter User Management. Once finished, click on Archive Email and then on Microsoft Exchange.

Under Access via, select HTTPS.

As Office 365 uses trusted certificates, the option Ignore SSL Warnings can be deselected.

Under Host, enter the name of the Office 365 Exchange server, usually outlook.office365.com.

If you do not know the host name, you can find it out by using the MailStore Exchange Autodiscover Tool.

Under User Name, enter the Office 365 user name of the user whose emails are to be archived.
Under User Name and Password, enter the credentials of a user who has access to all the Office 365 mailboxes to be archived.
Click on Next to continue.

If needed, adjust the settings for the List of Folders to be Archived, the filter and the Deletion Rules. By default, no emails will be deleted from the mailbox. The Timeout value only has to be adjusted in specific cases (e.g. with a very slow Internet connection). Please keep in mind that these settings apply to all mailboxes to be archived, as specified at the next step.

Select the users whose mailboxes are to be archived. The following options are available:

All users with configured email address

Choose this option to archive the mailboxes of all users who are set up, along with their email addresses, in MailStore’s user management.

All users except the following

Choose this option to exclude individual users (and thereby their Exchange mailboxes) from the archiving process, using the list of users below.

Only the following users

Choose this option to include individual users (and thereby their Office 365 mailboxes) in the archiving process, using the list of users below. Only the mailboxes of those users explicitly specified will be archived.

Synchronize with Directory Services before archiving

If selected, the MailStore Server user list will be synchronized with a Directory Service (usually Active Directory) before any archiving process is executed.
If your Office 365 environment is synchronized with an on-premise Active Directory, updates or additions of AD users will be reflected in MailStore Server as well before archiving. That way, once the archiving process is executed, their Office 365 mailboxes are archived automatically. In such a scenario, this option is especially recommended when the archiving process is to be executed regularly according to a schedule.

In the last step, a name for the archiving profile can be specified. After clicking Finish, the archiving profile will be listed under Saved Profiles and can be run immediately, if desired.

More information on how to execute archiving profiles can be found under the topic Email Archiving with MailStore Basics

Archiving Incoming and Outgoing Emails Directly

With the support of Office 365 Exchange’s journal function, MailStore can archive the incoming and outgoing emails of all users automatically. This is the only way to ensure that all emails are archived in their entirety

Important notice

The Office 365 Exchange’s journal function, which is required to archive incoming and outgoing emails directly, is only available in certain Office 365 plans.

Basic Functionality

Microsoft Office 365 Exchange provides the option to take down all incoming, outgoing and internal email traffic. At the time of sending and receiving, a copy of the respective email is created and stored in a mailbox called Journal Mailbox. Additionally, the email is provided with a Journal report containing information about the actual senders and recipients.

MailStore can be configured to archive this Journal mailbox at regular intervals. During this process, the emails from the Journal mailbox will be assigned to their respective MailStore users (i.e. their user archives) automatically. This means that all users are able to view only their own emails.

Before the archiving process can be set up in MailStore, journaling has to be set up for the Office 365 Exchange environment. Please proceed as follows:

Step 1: Creating a Mailbox for Journaling

The following steps describe how to set up journaling for your Microsoft Office 365 account.

Log into Microsoft’s Online Portal with your Office 365 admin account.
Click on Admin and select Exchange from the drop down menu.
Click on compliance management and then on journal rules.

Click on + (New)

The dialog window New Journal Rule opens:

Enter a name for the journal rule, e.g. Journaling.
In the If the message is sent to or received from... section select whether the rule should apply to all messages or to specific users or groups.
Under Journal the following messages..., choose whether to capture all messages, internally sent messages only, or only those messages with an external sender or recipient.
Enter the email address of the previously created journal user in the Send journal reports to: box.
Click on save to activate the rule.
If you have not set up a recipient for None Delivery Reports (NDRs) for undeliverable journal reports yet, you are asked to do it now. Just follow the onscreen instructions.

Step 2: Configuration of MailStore Server

Setting up the archiving profile is very similar to a non-hosted Exchange 2010 environment.

Important notice

Office 365 currently supports only external, Non-Office 365 mailboxes as journal mailboxes. In case the journal mailbox is a regular IMAP mailbox, you still have to select Microsoft Exchange > In- and Outbound E-mail Automatically under Archive E-mail in order to ensure that MailStore processes the journal reports correctly. Access via usually needs to be set to IMAP, IMAP-TLS or IMAP-SSL. The provider of such an IMAP mailbox must not remove the X-MS-Journal-Report header from the journal emails.

Please note that MailStore Server is not able to delete Office 365 journal emails from GMail mailboxes.

Please proceed as follows:

Start MailStore Client on the computer that is to execute the archiving task regularly and according to a schedule. This can be the MailStore server machine or any user computer. Log on as administrator.
Click on Archive Email.
From the list in the upper area of the window, select Microsoft Exchange to create a new archiving profile.
A wizard opens to assist in specifying the archiving settings.
Select In- and Outbound Email Automatically.

Important notice

In order to be able to archive emails immediately upon sending and receiving, some MailStore users along with their email addresses have to exist in the MailStore user management. If this is not the case, MailStore will offer to set up and execute the Active Directory Synchronization at this point. Once completed, the wizard will resume. If Active Directory Synchronization is not desired, the process can be canceled. In this case, users have to be created manually as described the in chapter User Management. Once finished, click on Archive Email and then on Microsoft Exchange.

Under Access via, select the protocol to be used to access the journal mailbox.

Depending on the protocol chosen, there is the option to Ignore SSL Warnings. Generally, these warnings appear if an unofficial or selfsigned certificate is used on the mail server.

Under Host, enter the name of the mail server that hosts the journal mailbox.
Under User Name and Password, enter the credentials of a user who has access to the journal mailbox.
If the journal mailbox is accessed via HTTP/HTTPS on a Microsoft Exchange Server, the primary email address of the journal mailbox has to be entered in the field Mailbox (opt.) if it is different from the user’s Windows login name. Otherwise, the field can be left blank. If the journal mailbox is accessed via IMAP/POP3, this field is grayed out.
If the option Synchronize with Active Directory before archiving is selected, the MailStore Server will synchronize its user list with Active Directory before any archiving process is executed.
If your Office 365 environment is synchronized with an on-premise Active Directory, updates or additions of AD users will be reflected in MailStore Server as well before archiving. This ensures that their current Office 365 email addresses are known to MailStore Server, so that their journaled emails are sorted into the correct archives (see below). In such a scenario, this option is especially recommended when the archiving process is to be executed regularly according to a schedule.
Depending on the setting Messages with unknown e-mail addresses, such messages will either be archived into the configured folder or not at all.
Select the option Delete them in origin mailbox only if Office 365 journaling has been tested sufficiently. Even without this setting, MailStore will not archive any duplicate emails.
Click on Test to verify that MailStore can access the mailbox.
Click on Next to continue.
A Timeout value can be specified. Change this value only in case of definite need (e.g. with very slow servers).
Click on Next to continue.
At the last step, a name for the archiving profile can be specified. After clicking Finish, the archiving profile will be listed under Saved Profiles and can be run immediately, if desired.

More information on how to execute archiving profiles can be found under the topic Email Archiving with MailStore Basics