Our company is finally moving years of archived Outlook data into Microsoft 365, and I’ve been asked to handle the migration. We have dozens of PST files collected from former employees, old laptops, and Outlook archives. Some of these files are several gigabytes in size and contain important emails, contacts, calendars, and attachments.
I started researching Microsoft’s official Azure Upload process, but it seems much more complicated than I expected. It requires assigning permissions, creating import jobs, uploading PST files to Azure Storage, preparing CSV mapping files, and validating everything before the import even begins. I’m worried that one small mistake could delay the entire migration or cause mailbox mapping errors.
My biggest concern isn’t just moving the files—it’s making sure the original folder hierarchy, timestamps, attachments, and metadata remain intact. We also can’t afford duplicate emails or partially imported mailboxes because many of these archives contain legal and financial correspondence.
After comparing different approaches, I found several discussions recommending Import PST to Office 365 through dedicated migration software instead of relying only on Microsoft’s native process. That seems like a more practical approach for organizations handling multiple PST files.
During my research, I also came across the DRS Softech PST Converter Tool. It appears to support direct Microsoft 365 migration along with features such as previewing mailbox contents, batch processing, date filters, duplicate email removal, and preserving the original folder structure. Those features sound useful, especially for large migration projects where accuracy matters more than speed.
Has anyone here recently completed a large PST migration? Did you use Microsoft’s Azure Upload method or a third-party utility? If you’ve had experience trying to Upload PST to Office 365, I’d appreciate hearing what worked best, what problems you encountered, and how you ensured no mailbox data was lost during the migration.