How to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another – Best Way Discussed
Summary: Looking for a quick way to migrate Teams chat from one user to another? I have got your back. From planning to executing entire process is explained and documented in this guide. Follow along with the steps mentioned here, to migrate chats from Teams to Teams without any downtime or hassle.
With the initial release, Microsoft Teams became one of the most popular collaboration software among business organizations due to its modern features and industry-leading data security. However, this often leads them to migrate their Teams data, especially chats, when transitioning to new tenants or restructuring their existing Teams environments.
Whether it is due to a merger or rebranding migrating Teams chat to another account could be a daunting task if not performed using the right approach.
However, before moving any further it’s important to note some of the pre-requisite and planning to ensure minimum downtime during the personal chat migration.
Table of Content
- Prerequisites for Microsoft Teams Personal Chat Migration
- How to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another?
- Method 1. Manually Exporting and Importing
- Shortcomings Associated with Manual Method
- Method 2. Using the Industry Leading Tool
- Steps to Migrate Chats from Teams to Teams Using Software
- Bringing It All Together
Prerequisites for Microsoft Teams Personal Chat Migration
Below listed are some of the most important pre-requisite, that you need to ensure-
- Microsoft 365 Admin Access – Before heading to chat migration, make sure you have access to the source as well as destination admin account credentials.
- Licensing – Another most important pre-requisite is to check the user licensing, and make sure proper licensing is in place to avoid downtime and data loss.
- Backup – It’s always recommended to back up your Microsoft 365 data before starting any migration process to ensure nothing is lost. I can suggest using the SysTools Office 365 Backup & Restore tool to perform a comprehensive backup from the cloud platform.
Once all the prerequisites are fulfilled then you can proceed to migrating chats.
How to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another?
Follow the below steps:
Plan Your Migration Strategy
- Define Scope – Check which data you need to move, it’s only the chat or you want to move channels, files, or Teams settings, etc.
- Analyze Existing Teams Environment – Another important factor is to audit the volume of chat data to be migrated to the destination Teams.
- Choose a Reliable Tool – Since Microsoft does not offer any tool or method for this task, hence we need to choose a reliable yet effective tool that fits your needs.
Prepare Source and Destination Tenants
- Authenticate Admin Accounts: Check the source and destination admin account credentials and authenticate to ensure seamless access.
- Check Permissions: Make sure to check the software permissions, as most of the tool requires API permission to move chat data to the destination.
As mentioned above Microsoft Teams lacks a direct chat export or migration feature, however, you can try the below manual method. It would not be easy to export the chat in a format that can easily imported to another One-to-One Teams chat.
Method 1. Manually Exporting and Importing Teams One-to-One Chat
While tedious and time-consuming, you can still use the below steps to somehow perform this operation, however, you might not like the result.
Exporting Chat History:
- Step 1. Open the One-One chat you want to migrate.
- Step 2. Use the “Copy chat history” option to copy the entire conversation.
- Step 3. Paste the copied history into a text document or a note-taking app.
Importing Chat History:
- Step 1. Open the target team or channel where you want to import the chat.
- Step 2. Manually paste the copied chat history into the conversation.
Shortcomings Associated with Manual Method
- Migrating Extensive Teams conversations can be a time-consuming, daunting, and error-prone task to perform.
- While copying and pasting the entire chat history from one Teams to another, there are high chances of human errors such as accidental deletion, wrong formatting, missing important chats, etc.
- If there is any retention policy applied to the Teams, you might not be able to copy the older chat history.
- If you have multiple user accounts or Teams chat to migrate then with the manual method it becomes a challenging task to log into each user account to export chat and import again.
- It becomes a challenging task while importing the complex conversion with multiple participants’ threads and media attachments.
Method 2. Using the Industry Leading Tool to Migrate One-to-One Teams Chat
It is evident from the above shortcomings of the manual method that it is not efficient enough to migrate the organization’s data using this method. I recommend using the SysTools Microsoft Teams Migration Tool to migrate personal one-to-one chat data to the destination Teams.
I have tested the software while migrating Microsoft Teams, personal chat, files, channels, groups, and channel posts. The migration process was seamless and it was completed within the timeframe without any downtime. I personally loved the re-run migration option and the software reporting. It offers you three types of re-run migration options to make sure no data is left behind, and the two types of post-migration reporting help identify and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
Let’s discuss the associated steps for the same.
Steps to Migrate Chats from Teams to Teams Using Software
Step 1. Download and launch the software on your PC. Choose Microsoft 365 for both the Source and the Destination.
Step 2. Check the box for Documents and Chat under User Options from the Resource and Workload selection.
Step 3. Log in with the Source and Destination Admin Credentials and Application ID and validate them respectively.
Step 4. To add users for chat migration you can use one of the following: Fetch, Import CSV, or Download Template.
Step 5. Check the imported users, select for migration, and apply priority if needed. Then validate the permissions of the selected account.
Step 6. Choose to continue migrating other workloads if chat is not your priority, and review license usage before proceeding.
Step 7. Once the document migration is completed, it is time to proceed to chat migration. Deselect Documents and revalidating the Source and Destination.
Step 8. Add a temporary user, authenticate, and start the chat migration process.
Step 9. Once chat migration is complete, mark it as done by following the warnings and prompts.
Step 10. Once you mark the chat migration complete, then you can download the report for your reference.
Note: Using this software you can also migrate Teams from one tenant to another without facing any downtime or error.
Bringing It All Together
Migrating personal chat data securely in Teams becomes crucial as it contains crucial business communications. Addressing this I have created this guide, which covers the user query i.e. “How to migrate personal chats from Teams to Teams?” and offers the most secure yet effective solution to perform this task without any data loss or downtime.