Ready to make the switch from Office 365 to Google Workspace but not sure where to start? You’re not alone. Over the last decade, Google Workspace has risen as a powerful rival to Microsoft’s cloud suite, luring businesses with its unique benefits. Whether you’re already a Gmail enthusiast or weighing Gmail vs. Outlook, we’ve got the insights you need.
In this guide, we’ll take you step by step on how to migrate from Office 365 to Google Workspace using the Data Migration Service (DMS) – a built-in, no-cost feature for paid account holders. Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds, but don’t be fooled! The process can eat up time due to the sheer volume of data.
Note: if you have more than five people to migrate with DMS, the process can be quite a time-consuming task. Also, we want you to be aware that the Data Migration Service has some restrictions. It can’t migrate files from OneDrive. You’ll have to move those files manually or use a third-party tool. Plus, with Data Migration, you can only transfer one type of data (email/contacts) at a time, not all together.
The second option is to use a third-party backup and/or migration tool. If you back up your data (which we strongly advise you to do), you can use the backup tool as the migration service for all saved data. These tools simplify the migration, especially if you need to transfer many users at once.
In this tutorial, we migrate email from Office 365 to Gmail, but the process of migrating Calendars and Contacts is the same.
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Table of Contents
How to Migrate from Office 365 to Google Workspace Using Data Migration Service
At this point, we assume by default that, by this point, you have already created the destination Google Workspace account(s). Let’s get started!
Step 1. Set up roles for Office 365 accounts
This is a pre-migration step that makes migration possible. When you are migrating your data, you need to provide your credentials from Office 365 accounts to Google Workspace Data Migration Service. For DMS to extract data, you need to assign some new roles for your O365 account. These roles are:
– ApplicationImpersonation
– ViewOnly-Configuration
How to do that:
1. Log in to your Office account.
2. Go to the Admin panel. In the desktop version, go to apps and click on Security&Compliance. In the web version, click on Exchange.
3. Go to the Permissions section.
4. In Admin roles block click on +. In the new window, fill out the Name field, go down to Roles and press on + again. Choose the first role (ApplicationImpersonation) and click Add, then repeat with the second one (ViewOnly-Configuration).
5. Click on Save.
6. Then, go to the User roles block. Click on + and add your account.
7. You don’t have to do this with all the accounts you are about to migrate data from – do this just for the account that Google Workspace will use to connect to Office 365.
8. Note that the process can take some time to take effect. Wait 10-20 minutes, and then you can proceed with the migration itself.
Step 2. Moving Mails, Calendars, and Contacts
So, let’s start Office 365 cross-tenant migration with emails.
1. Open your Google Workspace admin console. Go to Data Migration.
2. Chose Email.
3. In the Migration source field, select Microsoft Office 365.
4. In the Connection protocol field, chose Exchange web services. There will appear a new field where you need to put the web address of the migrating Outlook account.
5. In the Role account field, type the email address and password of the role account on your mail server.
6. Press Connect.
7. On the next page, you have to choose a date range and specific email folders to copy. Choose the options that make sense according to your needs.
8. Press Select Users.
9. On the new page, you have to specify the source account(s) to transfer data from, and the destination account to move data to.
10. Click Start.
It usually takes some time to see the percentage bar movement in the Status column. The amount of time needed to migrate the Office 365 mailbox to another tenant depend on the number of emails. For example, it may take an hour to move 2000 emails. If you have thousands of emails to migrate from different users, be patient, and occupy yourself with other things while waiting for migration to finish. Keep in mind that you might lose some important elements in this process, for example, shared inbox. After migrating to Google, you might need to create Google Workspace shared mailbox from scratch.
Do you have Google Workspace and want to start using Microsoft 365? Learn about Google Drive to Office 365 migration.
Remember to backup your business-critical data in Google Workspace!
