This is the working manual for the Email Tools menu in ShareMaster V2. It walks through each route screen by screen, using the labels you will see in the app, and ends with what to do when something stops you. For an overview of what the feature covers, see Office 365 email migration.
Before you start
Email Tools is part of the ShareMaster V2 beta. Install the beta from the members area, sign in, and open Email Tools from the home screen. Using them needs a Clone Master licence, or the 14-day trial; on other plans the tiles are locked and name the plan they need.
| Tile on the Email Tools menu | What it does | Needs Outlook? |
|---|---|---|
| Export From O365 | Office 365 mailboxes out to .pst files on this machine | Yes |
| O365 → O365 | Mailboxes from one Office 365 tenant into another | No |
| Import to O365 | Mail from another tenant, PST files, or an IMAP or POP3 server into Office 365 | Only for a PST source |
| Export runs and Import runs | The history of past runs, with Resume and the Excel reports | No |
Where Outlook is needed, it must be the desktop Outlook, 2016 or newer. The new Outlook from the Microsoft Store cannot open a .pst file, so it does not count.
Know the limits before you plan a cutover. Every route moves mail and its folders only: calendars, contacts, tasks, notes, inbox rules and mailbox permissions stay behind. When a .pst file is involved, emails attached to other emails do not come across, and an export to PST also drops images placed inside the body of a message. Ordinary file attachments are fine on every route.
Export Office 365 mailboxes to PST
Open Export From O365. The first screen asks what to export, and the two choices lead to slightly different sign-ins.
Export your own mailbox
- Choose My mailbox. No admin rights are needed.
- On 1. Sign in to Office 365, sign in as yourself and accept the consent screen, which asks for access to your own mailbox only.
- If you also want your online archive, tick Also export my Online Archive. The archive is read through Outlook, so Outlook on this machine must be signed into the same tenant, and the archive goes into a .pst file of its own.
- On 2. Choose the destination folder, click Choose folder…, pick or create a folder, then Use this folder.
- Close Outlook if it is open, then click Start export →. ShareMaster starts its own copy of Outlook in the background to write the file.
Export other mailboxes, or the whole tenant
- Choose Other mailboxes (admin) and sign in.
- When asked View all mailboxes in the tenant?, choose View all mailboxes (admin). A Global Administrator approves, once, permission for ShareMaster to read mail, with no scripts and no per-mailbox setup. If you choose Just the ones I can access instead, ShareMaster checks which mailboxes your account can open and lists only those.
- To include online archives, use the Find online archives bar. Each archive appears as a row of its own and is exported to its own file. Because archives are read through Outlook, ShareMaster first grants your account Full Access on each of those mailboxes. That is a permission change in the source tenant, and Outlook may need as long as an hour to pick it up.
- Choose the destination folder as above.
- In 3. Choose which mailboxes to export, tick the mailboxes you want. Use the search box, Select all and Unselect all; the counts above the grid show how many users, shared inboxes and archives were found. Each row shows the .pst file it will be written to.
- Close Outlook and click Start export →. Mailboxes are exported one at a time.
When the export ends, ShareMaster opens each .pst it wrote and counts the items inside. The finish screen compares that with the number of messages copied and warns you if the file holds fewer. Microsoft 365 group mailboxes cannot be exported to PST.
Migrate mailboxes from one tenant to another
Open O365 → O365. It goes straight to the connect screen, with Office 365 on both sides. No Outlook is involved at any point, archives included.
- On 1. Sign in to source, sign in to the tenant the mail is leaving. Tick Look for online archives first if archives should come too; each one is added as its own row.
- On 2. Sign in to destination, sign in to the tenant the mail is going into.
- In 3. Map each source mailbox to a destination, check the Migrate to column. ShareMaster pre-fills it by matching addresses and colours each row by how sure the match is. Click a cell to search for a different destination, or clear it to leave that mailbox out.
- Optionally, use Into Folder (optional) to put a mailbox's mail inside a folder in the destination rather than at the top level, useful when two source mailboxes go into one destination.
- Click Next →.
Where an online archive can land
In Migrate to, a destination mailbox appears twice: once as its primary mailbox and once as its online archive. Pick the archive entry to copy an archive into an archive. If the destination archive is not switched on yet, ShareMaster can switch it on; Microsoft can take from a few minutes to an hour to provision it, and the screen shows a banner while it waits. Archives and Microsoft 365 group mailboxes are copied with a certificate that ShareMaster registers in each tenant, which an administrator approves once.
Creating destination mailboxes as you go
The Migrate to list also offers to create the destination:
| Option | What it creates | Asks for |
|---|---|---|
| + Create new mailbox | A licensed user mailbox | A one-time admin consent (Grant permission), then a licence and usage location on the review screen |
| + Create new mailbox ARCHIVE | A licensed user mailbox with its online archive switched on | As above |
| + Create new SHARED mailbox | A shared mailbox, which needs no licence | Exchange admin access (Grant Exchange admin access), set up from inside ShareMaster |
| + Create new SHARED mailbox ARCHIVE | A shared mailbox with an online archive | As above |
Shared mailboxes are created before any mail is copied, and the Shared mailboxes screen shows each one as created, already existing, or needing attention. An address that is still held by something in the tenant can be swapped for a free address, or the mailbox can be created by hand in the admin centre and confirmed. Then click Start copying.
New user mailboxes go to Review & start. Choose the default licence for the new mailboxes and the two-letter usage location, decide whether to Enable an online archive on each new mailbox (it is turned on for you when a source mailbox is over 50 GB), and optionally auto-expanding archiving. Then click Start migration →.
Import PST, IMAP or POP3 mail into Office 365
Open Import to O365 and pick the source on Import to Office 365 - pick the source. The destination is always Office 365. Picking Microsoft 365 here is the same tenant-to-tenant flow described above.
From PST files
- Choose PST file. If the tile says Outlook was not detected, install desktop Outlook first.
- Click Add .pst file(s)… and add one or more files. They are opened read-only and never changed.
- Click Use these PST files. Each file becomes a row in the matching grid.
- Sign in to the destination tenant, choose a destination for each file in Migrate to, and click Next →.
From an IMAP server
- Choose Generic IMAP.
- Enter the host, port and encryption, the username (usually the email address) and the password. Hosts that require an app password need that instead of the normal one.
- Click Test connection, then Connect source to list the folders.
- Sign in to the destination, pick the destination mailbox and click Next →.
Each IMAP run reads one account. For several old accounts, run the import once per account.
From a POP3 server
Choose POP3 and fill in the same fields. POP3 can only see the inbox, so folders and read state do not exist on that side to copy. ShareMaster never deletes anything from a POP3 server, even though the protocol would allow it.
During the run: watching, stopping and resuming
The run screen shows counts across the top: messages migrated, mailboxes done, skipped and failed, and for an export what is in the .pst. Below them, four tabs: Items lists each message with its status and can be searched, Mailboxes shows progress per mailbox, Event log is the running commentary, and Errors gathers whatever failed. Minimize lets the run carry on in the background while you use the rest of ShareMaster.
If Microsoft 365 throttles the copy, ShareMaster waits as instructed and carries on; the run is not marked as failed. If the network drops, the run pauses until it is back.
Cancel asks whether to finish the messages in flight, stop now, or keep running. A stopped run is kept in Email migration history (open it from Export runs or Import runs). Click Resume there to carry on: it reconnects and skips every message already copied. A resume must go back into the same destination account, and a PST run needs its files still at the same path.
Each run in the history has a Download report button: an Excel workbook with a summary sheet and a row per message showing its mailbox, folder, size, status and any error. Reports stay available for 90 days.
Messages you might see, and what to do
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The PST tile says Outlook was not detected | No desktop Outlook, or only the new Store Outlook | Install desktop Outlook 2016 or newer, then open the tile again |
| Close Outlook before exporting | An export runs its own copy of Outlook and cannot share it | Close Outlook and click Retry |
| Outlook is signed into a different tenant | Online archives are read through Outlook, which is connected elsewhere | Sign Outlook into the source tenant, or continue without the archives |
| Received dates at risk | A test write showed the destination would not keep the original received date | Cancel the migration, or continue knowing the copies may show when they were copied rather than when they arrived |
| Message is larger than the destination's 45 MB limit | That message is too big for the way this destination is being written | It is recorded as failed and listed in the report; move it by hand if it matters |
| Mailboxes are hidden (unlicensed or no access) | Without admin consent only mailboxes you can open are listed | Choose View all mailboxes (admin) |
| Wrong destination account on Resume | You signed into a different destination than the run started with | Sign in as the original destination account |
| Stopped early - INCOMPLETE | Fewer messages arrived than were found | Open the report, check the Errors tab, then Resume |
Common questions
Why is a mailbox missing from the export list?
Without the admin consent, ShareMaster lists only the mailboxes your own account can open: yours, and any you have Full Access to. Unlicensed mailboxes are hidden too. Choose View all mailboxes (admin) to list the whole tenant.
Can I run the same migration twice to pick up new mail?
Not safely. A new run does not know what an earlier run copied, so it copies everything again and you get duplicates. To carry on an unfinished run, use Resume from the email migration history, which skips what is already there.
Where do the PST files go?
Into the folder you choose on the destination card, one file per mailbox, named after the mailbox. An online archive gets its own file next to it. A mailbox bigger than about 45 GB continues into a second numbered file.
Does tenant to tenant need Outlook?
No. Outlook is used only when a .pst file is read or written: exporting to PST, importing from PST, and reading online archives during an export.
More about the feature: Office 365 email migration, and everything else in the beta on the ShareMaster V2 page. Moving SharePoint content as well? The migration guides cover sites, lists and libraries.