Get PST Capture Tool Alternative to Resolve Error

If anyone of you Tech geeks is looking to import PST into Office 365, it may be in your best interest to see what other tools are available. Office 365 PST Capture tool from Microsoft is one of the free products that helps the user to move data from PST file to O365 account. But the thing is PST capture tool generates an error while opening mailbox. So, its better to use PST capture tool alternative to move Outlook data.

Why PST Capture Tool Not Working Properly

Office 365 PST capture tool is one of the tools that help the users to import Outlook data to Office 365 account but I’m sure a lot of users won’t able to use it properly as PST capture tool generate error while opening mailbox in many cases. Now, you are in a problem in that case you need Office 365 Import PST Tool Download to solve such issue. You will come out on various blogs and articles that unveils a number of significant processes to remove this problem but still it doesn’t give a proper solution. Why?? Here’s are the top 5 opinion in my consideration that tells why tool is not working:

1. Client Software Install – Although it is only a shade over half a megabyte, it installs Windows services and needs a few bits of custom configurations (host server name and port). This approach doesn’t scale at all well. Maybe for 50 users, you might be able to visit all their desktops and get it installed, but not for a few hundred, never mind 50,000 users.
2. PST Ownership – the data reported back on each PST file found is sparse at best, but it does include the (NTFS) ‘file owner’. The only ‘semi-automated’ way of assigning ownership of a PST (and therefore which mailbox it gets ingested into) is to ‘use the file owner’. Unfortunately, most PSTs are showing up with ‘BUILTINAdministrators’ as the owner, so it’s a case of manual assignment (selecting from the Global Address List) – again not feasible for more than a few tens of PSTs, never mind hundreds of thousands of PSTs
3. Locked PST Files – most users have PST files open in their Outlook profile. It seems that the PST Capture Tool cannot process those because Outlook has a lock on them. Realistically this means the migration can only happen when users do not have Outlook open.
4. Disconnecting / Deleting PST – this is going to be a really confusing one for the end users, when a migration is completed, the original PST is not removed from the Outlook profile or deleted, so users end up with all their PST content in their mailbox as well as the PSTs file still connected in Outlook. It would have been better to automatically remove these (at least from the profile, if not from disk also) when the file has been migrated.
5. Other PST Types – this is one that we came across a few years back – if a user adds a ‘SharePoint List’ or an ‘Internet Calendar’ to their Outlook profile then those are stored, under the covers, as PST. It seems this tool also imports the data from those. Migrate that data and it gets regenerated in the PST again and presumably imported again, later when it should not have been pulled in, in the first instance.

How to Use PST Capture Tool of Office 365

In order to resolve PST capture tool import error error opening mailbox, you need to first install the PST Capture Agent service that help the system to understand what all data to be moved from Outlook to Office 365. Then you need to follow these steps:

This might help you to configure everything correctly.

1. Please make sure that you have the 64 Bit version of Outlook installed and that it is installed on the machine on which PST Capture Tool is running.
2. Please check if the user has the Mailbox Import Export permissions. If it does not have them, then please assign them using the following command:
   New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role “Mailbox Import Export” -User “PSTImportUser”
3. Please check that the Microsoft Exchange PST Capture Tool’s Service Account has an Exchange 2010 Mailbox.
4. Please check that the Service Account is a member of Local Administrators Group.
5. Please make sure that the Service Account is a member of Organization Management and also the Public Folder Management.
6. Check that the Service Account is mailbox-enabled and has an Outlook profile configured for it.
7. Please make sure that the correct Service Account is chosen for the PST Capture Tool. To do this, please go to Properties of ‘Microsoft Exchange PST Capture Service’ > Log on tab and check the Service Account.

Verdict

If the problem of how to import PST file in Office 365 is your deed then you need to either use PST capture tool or the new tool of Microsoft Azure Azcopy. If that tool even doesn’t even work it’s better to go through an automated process to import Outlook PST to O365 account via Office 365 Import PST Tool.