Backing Up Microsoft 365 Exchange Online Mailboxes

Exchange Online

Protecting Exchange Online mailboxes

What items can be backed up?

You can back up user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, and group mailboxes. Optionally, you can choose to back up the archive mailboxes (In-Place Archive) of the selected mailboxes.

What items can be recovered?

The following items can be recovered from a mailbox backup:

• Mailboxes
• Email folders
• Email messages
• Calendar events
• Tasks
• Contacts
• Journal entries
• Notes

The following items can be recovered from a public folder backup:

• Subfolders
• Posts
• Email messages

You can use search to locate the items.When recovering mailboxes and mailbox items, you can select whether to overwrite the items in the target location.

Selecting mailboxes

Select the mailboxes as described below, and then specify other settings of the backup plan as appropriate.To select Exchange Online mailboxes

1. Click Microsoft 365.
2. If multiple Office 365 organisations were added to the backup service, select the organisation whose users' data you want to back up. Otherwise, skip this step.
3. Do one of the following:
   • To back up the mailboxes of all users and all shared mailboxes (including mailboxes that will be created in the future), expand the Users node, select All users, and then click Group backup.
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     • Please note all future created mailboxes will be included in this Group Backup and will consume subscribed seats quota. Current version of backup design does not support exclusion of specific mailbox from being backup on Group Backup Plan once created. 
     • If you wish to backup only specific user mailbox, create individual Mailbox backup plan and apply to those needed 
     • To back up individual user mailbox, expand the Users node, select All users, select the user  that you want to back up, choose mailbox on what to backup, and then click Backup.
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   • To back up individual user or shared mailboxes, expand the Users node, select All users, select the users whose mailboxes you want to back up, and then click Backup.
   • To back up all group mailboxes (including mailboxes of groups that will be created in the future), expand the Groups node, select All groups, and then click Group backup.
   • To back up individual group mailboxes, expand the Groups node, select All groups, select the groups whose mailboxes you want to back up, and then click Backup.
4. On the backup plan panel:
   • Ensure that the Mailboxes item is selected in What to back up.
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   • If you do not want to backup the archive mailboxes, disable the Archive mailbox switch.

• [Optional] If you want to encrypt your backup, enable the Encryption switch, and then set your password and select the encryption algorithm. Please safe keep the encrypt key, if it is lost, there is no way to recover them even from Exabytes.

Recovering mailboxes

1. Click Microsoft 365.
2. If multiple Microsoft 365 organisation were added to the backup service, select the organisation whose backed-up data you want to recover. Otherwise, skip this step.
3. Do one of the following:
   • To recover a user mailbox, expand the Users node, select All users, select the user whose mailbox you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • To recover a shared mailbox, expand the Users node, select All users, select the shared mailbox that you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • To recover a group mailbox, expand the Groups node, select All groups, select the group whose mailbox you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • If the user, group, or the shared mailbox was deleted, select it in the Microsoft 365 backups section of the Backups tab, and then click Show backups.
4. You can search users and groups by name. Wildcards are not supported.
5. Select a recovery point. Tip:To see only the recovery points that contain mailboxes, select Mailboxes in Filter by content.
6. Click Recover > Entire mailbox.
7. If multiple Microsoft 365 organisations are added to the backup service, click Microsoft 365 organisation to view, change, or specify the target organisation. By default, the original organisation is selected. If this organisation is no longer registered in the backup service, you must specify the target organisation.
8. In Recover to mailbox, view, change, or specify the target mailbox. By default, the original mailbox is selected. If this mailbox does not exist or a non-original organisation is selected, you must specify the target mailbox.
9. Click Start recovery.
10. Select one of the overwriting options:
    • Overwrite existing items
    • Do not overwrite existing items
11. Click Proceed to confirm your decision.

Recovering mailbox items

1. Click Microsoft 365.
2. If multiple Microsoft 365 organisations were added to the backup service, select the organisation whose backed-up data you want to recover. Otherwise, skip this step.
3. Do one of the following:
   • To recover items from a user mailbox, expand the Users node, select All users, select the user whose mailbox originally contained the items that you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • To recover items from a shared mailbox, expand the Users node, select All users, select the shared mailbox that originally contained the items that you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • To recover items from a group mailbox, expand the Groups node, select All groups, select the group whose mailbox originally contained the items that you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • If the user, group, or the shared mailbox was deleted, select it in the Microsoft 365 backups section of the Backups tab, and then click Show backups.
4. You can search users and groups by name. Wildcards are not supported.
5. Select a recovery point.Tip. To see only the recovery points that contain mailboxes, select Mailboxes in Filter by content.
6. Click Recover > Email messages.
7. Browse to the required folder or use search to obtain the list of the required items. The following search options are available. Wildcards are not supported.
   • For email messages: search by subject, sender, recipient, and date.
   • For events: search by title and date.
   • For tasks: search by subject and date.
   • For contacts: search by name, email address, and phone number.
8. Select the items that you want to recover. To be able to select folders, click the "recover folders" icon: Additionally, you can do any of the following:
   • When an item is selected, click Show content to view its contents, including attachments. Click the name of an attached file to download it.
   • When an email message or a calendar item is selected, click Send as email to send the item to the specified email addresses. You can select the sender and write a text to be added to the forwarded item.
   • Only if the backup is not encrypted, you used search, and selected a single item in the search results: click Show versions to select the item version to recover. You can select any backed-up version, earlier or later than the selected recovery point.
     
9. Click Recover.
10. If multiple Microsoft 365 organisations were added to the backup service, click Microsoft 365 organisation to view, change, or specify the target organisation.
11. By default, the original organisation is selected. If this organisation is no longer registered in the backup service, you must specify the target organisation.
12. In Recover to mailbox, view, change, or specify the target mailbox. By default, the original mailbox is selected. If this mailbox does not exist or a non-original organisation is selected, you must specify the target mailbox.
13. [Only when recovering to a user or a shared mailbox] In Path, view or change the target folder in the target mailbox. By default, the Recovered items folder is selected. Group mailbox items are always recovered to the Inbox folder.
14. Click Start recovery.
15. Select one of the overwriting options:
    • Overwrite existing items
    • Do not overwrite existing items
16. Click Proceed to confirm your decision.