Can you Export Emails from Office 365 to Hard Drive?

Admin | Cloud Backup Email Conversion How to's Software Technology | 4 minutes read | Last updated on February 8th, 2023,

Query:

My Office 365 subscription plan is going to be finish or expire. I do not want to continue with the Office 365 due to budget issue. Therefore, I need to take backup and export Office 365 mailbox to desktop. Please recommend me how can you export emails from Office 365 to desktop?

Solution:

Don’t worry. You can precisely take backup of your Office 365 emails into multiple formats. We have described 4 best and reliable solution to export Office 365 emails, calendars, contacts, and attachments into PST, PDF, MSG, EML, EMLX, and MBOX file format without any issue.

How to Export Emails from Office 365 to Desktop?

There are various ways due to which one can successfully save Office 365 mailbox emails to desktop. Here are a few ways available on how can you export emails from Office 365 mailbox to the hard drive.

Technique#1. Export Office 365 Emails as PST

One of the manual way recommends moving all emails to the personal storage file. Outlook automatically makes a Personal Storage Table or PST file for the whole database. A user can select choosy folder items to export to a new PST file saved with the .pst extension. For this, Microsoft Outlook desktop application requires to be configured on the system.Now repeat the steps given below to export Office 365 mailbox as PST file.

  1. First of all, configure the Office 365 account on the Outlook desktop email client.
  2. Then, go to the File menu>> Import & Export.
  3. Now, this will open the Import and Export Wizard.
  4. From this, choose Export to a File.
  5. Next, choose ‘Outlook data file’ to move mailbox content on to the .pst file
  6. Also, make sure to check the box next to conclude Subfolders.
  7. In the last, click on the Finish to start the backup procedure.

Technique#2.Move Office 365 Emails in HTML Format

This is still another solution on how can you export emails from Office 365 mailbox to the hard drive. By using this way, a number of Office 365 emails can be save in the .html format. Just follow the steps below to achieve this process:

  1. First of all, switch to Mail view and open the mailbox that includes the email file required.
  2. Next, go to the File menu >> Save As.
  3. Now, a file explorer window will display. Then, go to the destination location where the email file requires to be kept.
  4. After that, name the file and from the Save as Type drop-down box choose HTML.
  5. Next, click on the Save button.
  6. Now, repeat this above given steps again and again for the rest of the emails.

Technique#3.Convert Office 365 Emails to PDF

Microsoft does not offer PDF as the default Save as type. As there is no direct method of moving Outlook emails into PDF, an indirect method has been mentioned here. For this, emails first require to be saved in the .html format. Then open the HTML file in a Word and lastly save it in PDF. Complete steps are mentioned to convert Office 365 emails in PDF file format.

  1. Firstly, save the email file in the .html format as mentioned in the earlier solution.
  2. Now, open MS Word and go to the File >> Open.
  3. Now, select the HTML file saved in the first step.
  4. After that, go to File >> Save As… and choose PDF as the file type from the drop-down box.
  5. Finally, click on the Save button to complete the process.

Technique#4.Professional Solution – Office 365 Backup to Export emails from Office 365 to Desktop

There are not so many effective and proficient ways available to move bulk Office 365 emails to local drive. The one solution includes converting mailbox items to the .pst file. This can be very difficult task. There are times when the email formatting and folder structure is not preserved with this technique. Also, there is a PST file size restriction in older editions of MS Outlook. Other ways are just laid off and not so worthy when relate to work around solutions exist in the market. Such alternatives include programs like Office 365 Backup Tool. Complete mailboxes for multiple accounts can be exported using this tool. Select between user-based and date-based filters for choosy migration of email to save time and energy. Choose among a single file backup or save complete mailbox folders such as Inbox, sent items, drafts, etc.

The Final Words

After Outlook switched their services to the cloud, there have been a lot of new difficulties encountered by the users. Many face troubles in transporting email files to their desktop or local system. They face difficulties on even exporting emails in a portable format which can be taken to another system. There are a lot of manual techniques by which emails can be stored on the system but not so efficient. Some of the solutions on how can you export emails from Office 365 to desktop have been discussed in this entire blog.