Email: Moving Archived Mail from a PST File to Office 365

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The University’s migration of faculty and staff electronic mailboxes to Office 365 is bringing many new benefits to NYTech Email users. One feature that most users will appreciate is the increased amount of storage space for saved mail. These instructions cover how to move saved messages from local mail archives (PST files) to your online Office 365 mail storage space on the Microsoft cloud.

The PST File

The PST file is a mail archive file created by Microsoft for its family of “Outlook”-branded mail applications. These applications include the Entourage mail client for the Macintosh and the web-based Office 365 Mail (the “Outlook” tile in the Office 365 environment). The format of PST files is proprietary, designed to only be opened by Microsoft mail applications. A PST file will be set off by the extension “.pst” if listed on a file inventory. If you look at a PST file’s properties on a Windows system, it will be listed as an Outlook Data File.

Locating Your Mail Archive Folder

If you are not sure whether or not you have mail stored in archive files, you will need to open your Outlook email client and look at the inventory of folders on the left side. For Outlook 2010, 2013, and 2016, you will need to make sure that the Home tab is selected.

If your version of Outlook is accessing a locally-stored archive file, it will be listed under the other folder entries (Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts) and set off with its own triangle icon. If you would like to make sure that a listing is a PST file on your local system, click once on the name so that it is highlighted. Then right-click to bring up the secondary menu. If Data File Properties is listed as an option, then the file that you have selected is a PST file.

If you need to know the location of the file on your system, click on the Advanced button on the Properties box. The location of the PST file in your local file system will be listed under Filename.

Importing Mail From a PST File

If you have mail stored in a PST file, you can easily import those messages into your New York Tech Email (Outlook) inbox archive with a few steps. How you go about doing this will depend on how you access your mail.