How to Migrate Public Folders to Office 365 Hybrid Account

“Do you want to migrate public folders to Office 365? Have you got stuck on “StalledDueToMailboxLock” error if you try to resume data migration? Well, in this blog, we will discuss different ways to move public folders to Office 365 account via Hybrid migration technique and resolve your problem”

The public folder is designed for shared access and also provide an effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people in the organization. Public folder helps to organize content in UI clearly for users and they can browse them easily. Moreover, each Public folder contains email, calendar, contact, and distribution list. So, you have multiple options for converting these items to Microsoft Office 365. Therefore, in the upcoming section, we are going to discuss a manual approach to migrate public folders to Office 365 hybrid in a convenient and effective way.

Migrate Public Folders to Office 365 by Commands

You can perform file migration by using PublicFolderMigrationRequest cmdlets (This can use the Exchange Mailbox Replication service to execute the migration task) and consider the following PowerShell scripts:

• Export-PublicFolderStatistics.ps1
  This script will create the folder name to folder size mapping file.
• Export-PublicFolderStatistics.psd1
  This file can be used by Export-PublicFolderStatistics.ps1 script and must be downloaded to the similar location.
• PublicFolderToMailboxMapGenerator.ps1
  This cmdlet creates a public folder-to-mailbox mapping file.
• PublicFolderToMailboxMapGenerator.strings.psd1
  This file can be used by the PublicFolderToMailboxMapGenerator.ps1 cmdlet and must be downloaded to the same path.

Note: In MS Exchange 2013, you need to be a member of the Organization Management role group. Before migrating all public folders, make sure you move all mailboxes to Exchange 2013.

Manual Way to Move Public Folders to Office 365

Go through the following steps to migrate legacy public folders to Office 365. Some of them are discussed below:

Step 1: Download the Migration Script

1. You should download all four of the MS Exchange 2013 public folder migration scripts
2. Save all commands to a local system on which you will be running PowerShell from. For e.g., C:\PFScripts.

Step 2: Prepare for Data to Migrate Public Folders to Office 365 Hybrid Approach

Perform all these prerequisite steps before you can perform the migration process. Go through the following prerequisite to migrate public folders to Office 365 hybrid steps on MS Exchange 2013 server:

1. Make sure that there is no existing public folder migration request. If there is something then, clear them out. This step is considered a prerequisite and it is not required in all cases. It requires only when you think there may be an older migration request in the pipeline. In many situations of Office 365 hybrid migration steps, the below-mentioned command would not affect the new migration. The following example can remove an existing public folder migration request.
   
2. Keep in mind that there is no existing public folder on Exchange server 2013, run the following scripts.
   
3. If the above-stated commands return any public folders, use the following cmdlets to remove all the public folders.
   

Step 3: Generate the CSV files

On the legacy Exchange version, run the Export-PublicFolderStatistics.ps1 cmdlet to create a folder name-to-folder size mapping file. This file contains two different columns like FolderName and FolderSize. The value of a folder size column will be available in displayed bytes.

• FQDN of source server is equivalent to the fully qualified domain name of Mailbox server where to host the public folder hierarchy.
• Folder to size map path indicates the hybrid migration Office 365 of file name and location on the network shared folder where you need a .csv file saved. You want to access this file from Exchange 2013 server. If you identify only the file name then, that file will be generated in the current location.
  

Step 4: Create Public folder mailboxes on Office 365 or Exchange 2013 server

• Now, run the following script to create the initial public folder mailbox on Exchange 2013 server. Moreover, Public folder mailboxes involve the hierarchy details for a public folder, whereas the public folder consists of the actual content. The first public folder mailbox that you generate will be a master hierarchy mailbox. You must have to create the initial public folder mailbox in HoldForMigration mode.
  
• Run the below-mentioned script to create some additional public folder mailboxes as required on the CSV file created from the PublicFoldertoMailboxMapGenerator.ps1 command.
  

For e.g., if you try to open a CSV file, all the public folders are named Mailbox1, Mailbox2, etc. If your latest public folder is named as Mailbox13, you have to create 13 public folder mailboxes. If you want to create multiple public folder mailboxes, you can also write a script to help automate the process. This example will create 25 public folder mailboxes.

After completing this process, you can lock all the public folders on a legacy version by running the following script:

This command will help to block the access from end users to the legacy public folders so that you can migrate them and unlock the access on Exchange 2013, and now, all users will get the new modern public folders.

Let’s Wrap Up

In the above-discussion to migrate public folders to Office 365, we have covered all manual measures and a hybrid approach in an absolute way. Also, we have discussed all prerequisite steps to perform the migration process. Else, users can take help of an automated solution i.e., Office365Import Tool. It is programmed in such a way to import PST to Office 365 archive mailbox account in just a few clicks so that you may not indulge yourself and learn to migrate public folders to Office 365 via hybrid ways.

Related Article: Know About PST Collection Tool and its Use