Moving from Google to Office 365 - Migration Tips?

[abillybob]

Hey All

 

So I'm hoping to do this over a weekend or during the night but basically I need to migrate all our current users on Google Apps across to Office 365. I know you can use imap but I've read online that this won't include things like Google Drive to OneDrive, Calendars, Contacts and sometimes email folders.

 

I've started to look into software that will help me achieve this on the night, does anyone have a good all-rounder they've used in the past before? Or any other methods anyone can recommend?

 

Thanks people

[AlanD]

So...you have set up G suite with GAPs and GADs or whatever to synchronise the user accounts with your AD? You can do this in advance, and check it all seems OK.)

 

Then you can change MX records so mail comes into google.

 

Then I would allow users access to both O365 and Google and allow them to copy across what they like (give them a crib sheet), telling them then O365 will go off line in a month or something.

[mavhc]

Main advice is don't, Google's tools are way better. But apart from that you can do it yourself with powershell and https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/ or pay someone $5/user.

 

You can subscribe to your own calendars on your other service, imap email across, transfer docs by pointing gdrive and onedrive to the same folder, export and import contacts.

[jthompson]

Depending on how much data you have in Google, you may need to plan your migration over an extended period. Google have data transfer limits in place for IMAP (https://support.google.com/a/answer/1071518).

 

It may be that you need to start copying the bulk of your data over and get that all done and dusted before you decide on a switchover date for end users. Perhaps even multiple rounds of migration to get progressively more up to date across all of the accounts. You'd then be faced with only a matter of several days worth of data to migrate on the evening/weekend that you decide to switch over.

[ZeroHour]

Removing labels is the key thing when migrating out. Labels cause duplicate email as Gmail exposes the mail item as a duplicate when accessed via imap. Aka you have an email titled "welcome" in inbox but also with the label "welcomes" imap will see the mail item in the inbox and in the a folder called "welcomes" and they will be 2 separate entities. The All mail folder also is a mass of duplicates over imap so when importing you should exclude that folder. Everything should either be in inbox/sent labels or if they want folders they should ensure they dont have any mail labeled "inbox" in that label.

[abillybob]

Thanks all for your help.

 

Our Google apps isn't currently synced with AD it's own entity. I did know about imap transfer having a limitation so I was thinking maybe something like this would get around all the issues raised above? They mention labels also as something they can sort? https://www.skykick.com/migrate/google-apps-to-office-365/

 

How can I start the process now when people are still using Google App's drive and things surely the data will have to be overwritten anyway as they may have updated their files in the meantime?

[ZeroHour]

I used migrationwiz which basically would do an initial pull and then when you went to switch it would check for changes and move that across.

[abillybob]

I used migrationwiz which basically would do an initial pull and then when you went to switch it would check for changes and move that across.

That sounds good, does that sort out the problems with labels duplicating emails and the transfer restriction from Google?

[Jaymate]

We used cloud migrator - https://cloudm.co

 

Can migrate either way and from a variety of sources. It will do all you asked for to my knowledge and also do education pricing.

 

Give them a call to get the best pricing.

 

We migrated all data up to 3 months prior in advance and tested and then did a delta on the weekend of the migration. Only thing to remember is to set the date range to at least a year in advance so that it picks up calendars items that have been set for the year (we got caught on that for one school).

 

J