Public Folder Migration Guide From On-Premises Exchange 2007+ to Office 365 < 20GB

​​​Introduction

This is the complete onboarding task flow for migrating public folders from on-premises Exchange 2007 or later to public folders on Microsoft Office 365.

This guide should be followed if the total size of the public folders on the source is less than 20GB. If the larger than 20GB, refer to Public Folder Migration Guide From On-Premises Exchange 2007+ to Office 365 > 20GB.

This guide presumes that hybrid coexistence has not been set up. If working i​n a hybrid environment, refer to Public Folder Migration Guide From On-Premises Exchange 2007+ to Office 365 < 20GB Hybrid mode.

Complete each step in the order listed. If additional instructions are required, a link to a corresponding Knowledge Base article is provided.

To see what items are included in the migration, see What items are migrated with MigrationWiz? and What items are not migrated with MigrationWiz?

MigrationWiz is a migration solution (not a synchronization solution) and will NOT propagate updates, deletes, or moves of the items previously migrated in the first migration pass because 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. For more information, visit Project Sharing in MigrationWiz.

Prepare Source Environment

1. Set the elevated 'Organization Management' admin role to migrating admin account (this grants permission to all necessary read-only fields). Refer to How do I assign the elevated admin role 'Organization Management' to the account that is performing a Public Folder migration?
2. Ensure that the migrating admin account has permission on all Public Folders (owner access rights need to be permitted to the account being used for migration). Refer to How do I ensure the admin account being used for Public Folder migration has permissions on all Public Folders?
3. Ensure that the source administrator account has a mailbox enabled.
4. Split up large Public Folders (if any Public Folders contain more than 20,000 items (if the Source is Exchange 2007), or 100,000 items (if the Source is Exchange 2010 or later), these should be split into multiple Public Folders. This will speed up your migration). Refer to How do I find the size of Source Public Folders?

Prepare Destination Environment

1. Set up the Office 365 tenant.
2. Add users and assign Office 365 licenses (if permissions are being migrated, this is required).
3. Create a Public Folder mailbox and assign root permissions to this Public Folder mailbox, to the administrator account being used for the migration. Refer to How do I create the Public Folder mailbox and database on Office 365?
4. If the administrator account does not already have one, assign a Valid Office 365 license and set up a mailbox for the account.

MigrationWiz Steps

1. Set up the Project. Read the How do I create a new migration project? article for more information.
2. Create the Source and Destination Endpoints (select Exchange Server Public Folder​ for the Source Endpoint, and Office 365 Public Folders for the Destination Endpoint). Refer to View, Add, and Edit Customer Endpoints
3. Add Public Folders (select Add/Quick Add and enter a forward slash ( / ) in the Root Folder Path field. We recommend this because it will migrate all Public Folders, and you will only need one Public Folder license per 10GB of data, regardless of the number of top-level Public Folders. If you use AutoDiscover and import Public Folders, each top-level folder will require at least one Public Folder license). Refer to How do I select to migrate all my Public Folders from the root level down?
4. Set the Project Advanced Options. Refer to What project Advanced Options are available?
• Set value for Licensing/Maximum licenses to consume per item per pass. (default value = 1). This allows up to 10GB to be migrated. For example, if you are migrating all Public Folders, using a forward slash ( / ), and the total data size = 39GB, increase this value to 4; otherwise the migration will stop at 10GB. Refer to How do I enable consumption of multiple licenses for a single item?
• Under Support/Support options, add RemoveFilterBasedOnFolderType=1. This flag is required if ​Public Folders contain items other than mail, such as calendar and contact items. Refer to How do I migrate a Public Folder with multiple item types?
• Set your Preferred BitTitan Data Center. For fastest migration speeds, select the Data Center that is closest to your Office 365 Destination tenant. Refer to How do I specify the data center to use for my migration?
5. Run Verify Credentials. Refer to How do I verify credentials?
6. Purchase Public Folder licenses. Refer to How do I purchase licenses?
   Note: To obtain an estimate of the number of Public Folder migration licenses required for your migration project, follow the directions in How do I estimate the number of Public Folder migration licenses required?.
7. Perform a Full Migration pass. Refer to How do I start a migration?
8. Perform a final Full Migration pass using the Advanced Option: AllowAllMailboxTypesForPFPermissions=1 in order to migrate all Security Group Permissions. If you do not run the second pass, none of the Security Group Permissions will migrate.
9. Receive migration statistics. Click the pie chart icon on the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics. Refer to How do I request statistics for my migration project?

Note: If you have multiple email addresses assigned to the Public Folder on the Source, and want to migrate them to the Destination, use the instructions in this article: Migrating mail-enabled Public Folder email addresses.