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IMAP to Hosted Exchange Migration Guide

This is the complete onboarding task flow for migrating mailboxes from IMAP systems to Hosted Exchange. Due to API limitations, IMAP migrations will only migrate mail items and we can only migrate mail items that are stored on the IMAP server. Verify that a copy of the mail remains on the server. If there is no mail on the IMAP server and it's stored in a local PST, use the PST migration process. If the data is stored in a local Outlook OST file (Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016), export the mailbox to a PST and use the PST migration process.

There are some tools and resources that will make the migration easier. We suggest reading through the following information and linked guides before beginning your migration. 

First migration?

We’ve created a guide on scoping, planning, and managing the migration process for your use. If this is your first migration, we recommend reading this guide carefully.

Prerequisites

There are many different versions of IMAP mail systems available. For this reason, we recommend running a trial migration on one or more mailboxes prior to the actual full migration project. Once the trial migration completes, check on the folder structure at the Destination to ensure that the directory structure is as desired. 

To run a trial migration, follow these steps:

  1. ​Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Click on your migration project. If you haven't created a project, create a project (following the steps laid out in the Create a Mailbox Migration Project below) and add a user to that project.
  3. Select the user for whom you wish to perform the trial migration.
  4. Click on ​Start.
  5. From the drop-down list, click on  Trial Migration .
  6. Click on Start Trial Migration.

This guide includes a folder mapping under the MigrationWiz Steps section, which will ensure that folders are mapped to the root label on the Destination mailboxes, rather than under inbox/labelname.

Licensing

We recommend that you purchase User Migration Bundle licenses for this migration scenario. User Migration Bundle licenses allow the performance of multiple migrations with a single license. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses.

To use your license by following the next steps:

  1. Purchase Licenses.
  2. Create a Customer.
  3. Apply Licenses.
  4. Review Considerations.
Purchase Licenses Create a Customer Apply Licenses Considerations

Purchase licenses by following the steps below:

  1. Sign in to your BitTitan account. 
  2. In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
  3. Click the Select button and choose User Migration Bundle licenses.
  4. Enter the number of licenses you want to purchase. Click Buy Now.
  5. Enter a Billing address if applicable.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Review the Order Summary and enter a payment method.
  8. Click Place Your Order.

Limitations

MigrationWiz is a migration tool, not a syncing tool. If changes are made at the source after migration, they will not sync to the destination, nor will changes made at the destination sync to the source. We do not have “live” monitoring of changes (as with a sync agent) and we cannot handle scenarios such as conflict resolution without user interaction.

MigrationWiz supports the capability to share migration projects across a Workgroup. When the Project Sharing feature is turned on, all Agents besides those who are Inactive can view all migrations projects. 

We are not able to support migrations with two-factor or multifactor authentication. 

The maximum individual file size MigrationWiz can support is 60GB.

Only mail folders are migrated with this scenario. Contacts and Calendar items will need to be exported/imported manually.

Exchange questions and troubleshooting

Our Exchange Mailbox FAQ, Exchange Migration Setup and Planning, and Exchange Mailbox Migration Troubleshooting guides contain a number of common questions and concerns, along with more information, guidance, and steps to resolve issues such as throttling.

Prepare the Source Environment

  1. Test connectivity to the IMAP server through our connectivity test tool. Fill in the form and click the Test button.
  2. Export user list to a CSV file.
    • Administrator accounts with at least read rights can export a user list.
    • If you do not have an administrator account, you will need to ask your IMAP host to provide you with a complete user list, in CSV file format.
    • This CSV file will be used to bulk-add users into your MigrationWiz mailbox project.

Prepare the Destination Environment

First, set up user accounts, then complete the following steps. 

Create access account

Ask the Hosted Exchange Provider to create an account for migration purposes (e.g., named MigrationWiz) and grant full access rights to each mailbox, by running this PowerShell script against the newly created account. Your Hosted Exchange provider needs to change the user to match your admin account before running the script.
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Add-MailboxPermission -AccessRights FullAccess -User MigrationWiz

If you do not provide an admin account when setting up your Destination endpoint, it will be necessary to provide SMTP email addresses, login names, and passwords when adding Destination users to your MigrationWiz project. If you do provide an admin account, you only need to provide the SMTP email addresses.

Some Hosted Exchange providers allow this access to be granted via their web portal. In this case, you could log in to each mailbox via their portal and then grant the migration account (e.g., MigrationWiz) to have read/write access to each mailbox. This is laborious and time-consuming, and so it is preferred that the Hosted Exchange provider run the PowerShell script above, particularly if you have a large number of users.

Some Hosted Exchange Providers will not grant this access. If that is the case, then you can request credentials from your end users during the migration. 

Request User Credentials

Create a project without admin credentials, and request credentials from users.

  1. Create a MigrationWiz mailbox migration project. When entering the Source information, do not click on the checkbox to enter admin credentials.
  2. Click on the green bar Bulk Add.
  3. Click on the checkbox I don't know the login name and password for the Source mailboxes.
  4. Click on the Upload bar.
  5. Click on the Choose File button, and select and upload your CSV file that contains the list of mailbox names.
  6. Click on the Save button.

When you submit the mailbox for migration, we will send an email with a secure link in which allows the end user to provide their credentials directly to the system. The sequence of steps are as follows:

  1. You submit the item for migration.
  2. An email is sent to the email address configured with a secure link to provide the credentials.
  3. The end user clicks on the provided link, which opens a secure web page.
  4. The end user provides their credentials directly to our system.
  5. The credentials are verified.
  6. The item is immediately submitted for migration.

The status of the migration will remain as "Waiting For End User" until the end user provides their credentials to the system.

Optional - Large Projects

If this is a very large project, the best results will be achieved by setting the project to use impersonation at the Source. In order to enable this, the PowerShell script below needs to be run by your Hosted Exchange provider, if they are willing.
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role ApplicationImpersonation -User <admin_user_name>

The second part of this process is to set your MigrationWiz project Advanced Options to use impersonation at the Source. This step is included in the MigrationWiz section in this guide.

Prepare Mailboxes

  1. Test mailbox access. 
  2. Export mailboxes to CSV file(s).
    • Ask the Hosted Exchange provider to provide them. 
    • If the provider has an admin console which includes this capability, run their tool to export the user list (and, if necessary, the passwords) to the CSV file.
    • If you have admin credentials on the Hosted Exchange environment, you only need a list of the email addresses. You do not need the password for each mailbox being migrated (because MigrationWiz will use delegation and perform the migration based on the admin credentials).
    • If you do not have admin credentials on the Hosted Exchange environment (which is common), you must obtain all the email addresses and passwords for the users.
    • If the list of mailboxes and passwords from the Hosted Exchange provider is not available, request that the users send these to MigrationWiz as part of the migration process.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration project

  1. Click the Go to My Projects button.
  2. Click the Create Project button.
  3. Click on the type of project that you wish to create. For this migration:
    • Mailbox: Mailbox projects are used to migrate the contents of the primary user mailbox from the previous environment to the new environment. Most mailbox migrations can migrate email, calendars, and contacts.

For mailbox migrations, use administrative credentials to access mailboxes. In most migration scenarios, the admin account needs to have full access rights to the Source mailboxes. 

  1. Click Next Step.
  2. Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
  3. Click Next Step.
  4. Select or create your destination endpoints.
  5. Click Save and Go to Summary.

Endpoints

Endpoints are created through MigrationWiz. If you select an existing endpoint from the dropdown, it will only show ten endpoints. If you have more than ten, you may need to search it.

Consider that endpoint search is case and character-specific. For example, Cust0mer will not show up if the search is customer. We recommend keeping a list of endpoints you have created, along with any unique spellings or capitalization you may have used.

Create your Endpoints

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

To create a new source endpoint:

  1. Click Endpoints
  2. Click Add Endpoint
  3. Enter endpoint name
  4. For endpoint type, select IMAP

  5. The server name should follow the format: imap.example.com

  6. Enter server port. As a general rule, the server port will be either 143 or 993 (if using SSL).

  7. If you are using SSL, add a checkmark next to Use SSL.

Region of Destination Tenant

The Region of Destination Tenant feature optimizes the migration performance and speed by choosing the region closest to the destination tenant. MigrationWiz displays a dropdown that allows you to select the destination region when configuring your destination endpoint. 

Tip

You can find the region of your destination tenant directly in the Microsoft Entra admin center by going to Identity > Overview > Properties, and using the Country or region or the Data location.

Country or region.png

For more information on this topic, review this article.

Warning

If you do not complete this field you will not be able to save your project and the “This field cannot be left blank.” error will appear

Endpoint Validation

Once the information has been provided for both, the source and destination endpoint, and the customer selects Save and Go to Summary, MigrationWiz performs an endpoint validation check.

This validation tests the administrator credentials entered into the project and the Modern Authentication setup only. If there is an issue, the screen redirects to the endpoint and provides an error message or flyout that can be selected for more information regarding the error.

Add Users

Add the user accounts that will be migrated to the project. MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

Use the Bulk Add option, and import from the CSV file that you prepared under the Prepare the Source section of this guide. 

Admin Account

If you have an admin account on the Source IMAP system, the format will be as follows.
However, most IMAP systems do not support administrative credentials. 

The following systems support IMAP: 

  • G Suite supports OAuth authentication.
  • Some versions of Novell GroupWise support Trusted Key authentication. Click here to learn more.
  • Some versions of Exchange IMAP support admin authentication. Click here to learn more.

Format

  • Source Email: SMTP email address.
  • Source Login Name: Consists of two combined names: the user name of the person whose email is being migrated, and the user name of the mailbox admin account. For example, for Exchange IMAP: Domain/Admin_UserName/User_UserName. The proper formats can be found here.
  • Source Password: Enter the administrator's password.

If administrative login is not available

  1. Request credentials from each user.
  2. Reset mailboxes to use the same password (this will lock users out).
  3. Have us automatically request credentials from end users. Click here to learn more.

To request credentials from users: 

Enter the Source Email addresses in the Source Email column, and checkmark the I don't know the login name and password for the Source mailboxes box. Users will then be requested to provide their credentials during the migration process.

For the Destination, you only need to enter the Destination email address of each user.

Bulk Add

To import one or more mailboxes once you have gathered the necessary credentials: 

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click on Add .
  4. Click on Bulk Add .
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.

Run Verify Credentials

  1. Open the Project containing items to validate.
  2. Select the items you wish to validate.
  3. Click on the Start button in your dashboard.
  4. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.​ 

Notify Users

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send an email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration.

Run Migration

Pre-Stage pass

  1. Select the users you wish to migrate
  2. Click the Start button from the top
  3. Select Pre-Stage Migration
  4. Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago
  5. Click Start Migration.

MX Record Cutover

Change over MX records on the DNS provider's portal.

Also, include the AutoDiscover (CName) setting.

Full (Delta) pass

  1. Select the users
  2. Click the Start button from the top
  3. Select Full Migration
  4. Click Start Migration

Run Retry Errors

Look through the user list and click any red "failed migration" errors. Review the information and act accordingly.

If problems persist, contact Support.

Unexpected Extra Arguments

If errors are listed in the MigrationWiz dashboard with the following error message: "Unexpected extra arguments to Examine Context: FolderNameWithQuote", then follow the steps below to add the support option flag AllowQuoteInFolder=1 at the item level, and run retry errors. 

Steps

  1. Click the Edit Item icon to the right of the item that you wish to edit
  2. Under the Support section, enter the support option: AllowQuoteInFolder=1
  3. Click Save Item
  4. Select the line item in your MigrationWiz dashboard
  5. Click Start
  6. Retry Errors

Request Statistics

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics.

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