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I also moved from Exchange on SBS 2003 to Office 365 with Outlook 2016.

I had archived my emails so it was easy to open the data file from the new version of outlook, however i recently noticed that i'm missing a big part of my emails of a certain period.

For example, i do have all my emails from 2014 and back but missing all of them between 2014 untill i made the transition to Office 365. I found those emails in my old ost file and managed to open them somehow with a 3rd party app, however i would like to know whether it is possible to open them and keep them in Outlook. Is that possible?

Do i have to setup again my old SBS2003 account so that OST is opened and then move emails from one folder to the other or is there some other way?

Also, since old SBS2003 account's email and the one i'm using now with Office 265 is the same email address, isn't there a chance to have a conflict if i try to setup my old account?

Replies are appreciated!

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2 Answers 2

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OST file is the "cached" file for mail that exists in your Exchange mailbox. It's meant for offline use, but you are expected to sync back with a server. Your "true" messages are with the Exchange server (SBS server). I would say the most authoritative way to get these back would be to:

  1. Restore the SBS server from last backup
  2. Export your mail items to PST file
  3. Import PST to Office 365 (or just connect PST in outlook and manually move mail)

If you can't access them in that fashion, I would continue on with your 3rd party app, if it can extract those to EML, or possibly PST than you can upload those to O365 thru Outlook.

As far as a conflict, you won't have a problem restoring the server. It will probably be easier to export the PST file from the Exchange console. Just google for how to export mailboxes from Exchange 2003 and you will find guidance on how to do that. Then you can just add the PST file to your Outlook and upload to Office 365 without reconfiguring it.

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  • Thanks for the reply. however the old SBS server is OFF since our enterprise moved to 365. I tried reconnecting with old credentials, however outlook only downloads part of the old emails. Is there some way to get the emails directly from SBS?
    – georgepal
    Commented Aug 8, 2016 at 5:38
  • Why not ask IT to power ON the SBS server and do this? (without connecting it to the network, just power up standalone, log in with a local account and export the mails to PST, then copy that PST to a thumbdrive.
    – Hennes
    Commented Aug 8, 2016 at 11:45
  • If you are able to turn it on, logon via webmail and check if you can see all your messages there. If you don't see them then most likely you had some sort of PST archiving or retention rule that has cleared out old messages from the server. If using PST's you should already have those files somewhere. If they were deleted, there may be no way to get them back without backups of the server (and that will be a pain I promise won't be worth it, as you will need multiple restores to get them all).
    – Jesus Shelby
    Commented Aug 13, 2016 at 15:46
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An OST is linked to an Outlook profile. So if you still have the Outlook profile you could disable the network connection and open Outlook offline, then export to a PST file. The PST file can then be imported into the new mailbox.

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