News

Microsoft Exchange Adds Google G Suite Migration Support

• By Kurt Mackie
• April 19, 2019

Users of Microsoft's Exchange Admin Center will soon have the ability to move Google G Suite calendar, contacts and e-mail data over to the Office 365 service, Microsoft announced this week.

The added support will arrive "in the coming weeks," according to Microsoft's Exchange team. Migrations will entail a 10-step process using the Exchange Admin Center, in addition to the preliminary steps that IT pros have to complete beforehand using Google's tools. Once those steps are completed, the Exchange Admin Center or Exchange Online PowerShell can be used to move Google G Suite items over to Office 365.

The steps, involving various graphical user interface-based tools, are outlined in this Microsoft document.

Organizations can perform a "cutover migration," where everything gets moved at once. Alternatively, they can do a "staged migration," which takes place over a longer period of time, with "coexistence" occurring between the two e-mail services. In any case, Microsoft recommends moving users in batches, such as moving certain departments together.

IT pros should consider the average mailbox size that's getting moved to determine the right approach, as well as the kind of data that's getting moved.

Moving Google G Suite data to Office 365 seems like a slow proposition. It's possible to move 2GB of data per mailbox per day, although any data that didn't move over will commence migrating on the subsequent day.

The 2GB daily limit comes from Google. "This limit is enforced by G Suite," Microsoft's announcement stated. The rate at which contacts and calendar data can get moved is somewhat unclear as it "completely depends on the quota restrictions for your tenant's service account on the Google G Suite side," Microsoft's announcement explained.

Some Google G Suite data won't get moved. Things like filters, rules, automatic replies, vacation settings, shared calendars and room bookings won't migrate. Tags for contacts won't move. It's possible to move three e-mail addresses per contact, but no more. Google Vault data won't get moved over. The max default e-mail size that can be migrated is 35MB, but IT pros could alter the default. The move won't support Google labels, and so labeled data will get moved into folders bearing the label's name.

The new migration feature, when it's available for a particular Office 365 tenancy, will be show up under the "Migration tab in the Exchange Admin Center," Microsoft indicated.