How to Download All Office 365 Emails? 3 Best Methods Explained

Karen Chard ~ Modified: 01-12-2022 ~ Office 365 ~ 7 Minutes Reading

Overview: How to download all Office 365 emails? Here, are the best possible ways for downloading emails from Office 365.

Office 365 (Now Microsoft 365) has become the preferred business productivity suite. The services offered by Office 365 are unmatched. Since Office 365 is a cloud-based platform it is a good practice to save Office 365 emails. Although Microsoft provides some indirect ways to download emails, they take too much effort and are unviable in many situations. This is why taking the help of an automated tool to complete the task is much more efficient.

This article offers a relatively easy-to-follow guide on – How to download all Office 365 emails?

Read Similar: Steps to Migrate Office 365 to Google Workspace

Reasons to Download Office 365 Emails

Office 365 is cloud-based which means all of the data is stored on a remote server. Users do not have physical access to those servers. There might be several reasons for downloading O365 emails from the servers. We have discussed some below:

Users may download Office 365 emails for the purpose of migrating the data to a different Office 365 account.
Downloading Office 365 account data locally is a great way to save the data from any future cyber-attacks. This creates a local backup and keeps the file safe.
If a user leaves the organization and you intend to retain the data in that employee’s Office 365 mailbox, the company would have to keep paying for the license for their account. This can be avoided by downloading Microsoft 365 emails from that account.
This is a good practice if the user intends to keep a periodic mailbox backup.

How to Download All Office 365 Emails? Some Techniques

In this section, we will discuss some methods to download Office 365 emails. There is no direct method or tool provided by Microsoft. So, we had to find some workarounds. Let’s start.

Method 1: Configure Office 365 Account in Outlook

This method requires the user to configure Office 365 account in the Outlook desktop app. This would let the user access the Office 365 emails in Outlook.

Note: It is necessary to install the Outlook desktop client on your system.

#1 Phase: Setup O365 Account in Outlook

Go to the Control Panel on your computer and select the Mail
In the opened window, click Add.
Now, a new dialog box will open. Here, select Manual Setup or additional server types. Click on the Next
The user must choose the Office 365 option and enter the required credentials.
Now, your Office 365 account will be verified and then you will see the Autodiscover.xml window. The user is required to provide Office 365 login credentials.
If the provided details are correct, a new window will appear with a Congratulations message.

#2 Phase: Export Emails from Outlook

Now, open the Outlook app and check the account. This concludes the account configuration part of the process. Now, to download the emails, the users have to perform the following steps:

Firstly, open the Microsoft Outlook desktop app.
Click on the File option and choose Import & Export.
A new dialog box will open up. Here, choose Export to a File
There are two options for file export, choose Outlook data file(.pst).
You can choose to Include Subfolders and browse the destination path.
Now export Office 365 mailboxes to PST file extension.
Go to the destination path and get the resultant PST file.

Shortcomings

There are several shortcomings to this process that keep it from being the ideal answer to – How to download all Office 365 emails?

Firstly, this method cannot be performed without the Microsoft Outlook desktop client. Hence, it becomes necessary for the user to install it.
Since Microsoft Outlook is being used in this process, it becomes necessary that the user is familiar with the working and functionalities of Outlook.
To perform this process, the user has to be technologically sound.

Read Similar: Techniques to Migrate Office 365 to Zimbra

Method 2: Download Office 365 Email as HTML or PDF File

This method of downloading Microsoft 365 emails is relatively easy. But, the limitation of this process is that it can only download a single email file in a single go. Hence, this becomes a tedious task when multiple emails have to be downloaded from a mailbox.

Downloading M365 Emails as HTML File

Open Outlook and switch to Mail View, open the inbox folder that contains the emails you want to download.
Open the File menu and click Save As. Now, provide a location path to store the file.
In the Save As drop-down menu, select the HTML format and save the file.

Downloading Outlook 365 Emails as PDF

To save Office 365 emails to PDF file, the user is required to save the emails in an HTML format because PDF is not included in the list of default file formats supported by Microsoft.

Before starting the given steps download Outlook 365 emails in HTML format first.

Open the Outlook app and open the File
Select the Open option and open the HTML file created by you.
Open the File option again and using the Save As option, save the emails as PDF files.

Limitations

This process might look easy, but it is only suitable when there is a need to download a few O365 emails only. The drawbacks this process holds are:

Following this process to download all Office 365 emails will become a tedious task. This process is not suitable to download a large number of emails.
This process requires Microsoft Outlook to download Office 365 emails locally.
If the user needs the download M365 emails in a PDF file, they would have to perform the task twice.

Method 3: Use a Professional Tool

As explained above, the practice of downloading all Office 365 emails is advantageous. Sadly, the methods offered by Microsoft are riddled with flaws. To overcome the shortcomings of the other methods, we will introduce an automated solution for the query – How to download all Office 365 emails?

This is the Most Trusted Office 365 Backup Software. Using this tool, users can download their Office 365 mailbox emails with easy-to-follow steps.

Download for Windows Download for Mac

Run the suggested software on your machine, enter account credentials, and press the Login button.
Thereafter, the software will start uploading O365 folders into the software panel.
Pick all necessary and required M365 folders from GUI using checkboxes.
The tool has approx 30 saving options, choose any saving option according to your choice.
Use advance filters to download Outlook 365 emails by date range, email address, and email subject.
After that, set the preferred destination path using the Change button. However, the software automatically selects the Desktop as default destination path.
Press Backup to start downloading M365 emails and wait for completion.
Microsoft 365 emails were downloaded successfully, see the message of completion, and click on Ok.
Lastly, the software automatically opens the destination path. Hence, users can easily get downloaded O 365 emails.

Advantages of Using This Tool

This tool offers many options to make this process a perfect answer to the question – How to download all Office 365 emails? Without this tool, this process would be time-consuming and take a lot of effort.

Here are some advantages of this tool:

This tool can also download Emails, Calendars, Contacts, and Documents.
There are options to control the size of the PST file being downloaded.
Unlike the other method, there is no limit to the number of emails being downloaded at once.
This tool also offers the option of Concurrent backup which further facilitates the download Office 365 email.
The provided date filter can be used for the selective backup of mailboxes.
It can also download Office 365 emails from Shared Mailbox and In-place Archive mailbox.

Conclusion

The manual methods mentioned in this text might look like the suitable choice, but considering the limitations they have, they prove to be less than safe and suitable. The advanced software mentioned above perfectly solves the problem – How to download all Office 365 emails?

There is no need for the user to look anywhere else.