5 Steps to Move Contacts, Calendars, Tasks & Emails from Outlook to Outlook.com
Nowadays, most people prefer to keep their data on the cloud. Therefore, people are shifting from desktop-based applications to cloud-based applications. Email client usage has increased a lot among people for business communications and other purposes also. Moreover, two most commonly used email clients are Outlook and Outlook.com. But, today people are moving from Outlook to Outlook.com due to different reasons like accessing their data from any location, a large amount of storage space, etc. Therefore, in the upcoming section, we are going to discuss different manual techniques to move data such as Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, etc from Outlook to Outlook.com. Before, moving forward one should know the reason behind moving outlook mail to the outlook.com mailbox.
Best Solution for Outlook.com Data
Microsoft Outlook.com is a famous webmail service. For taking complete data from MS Outlook.com account, choose SysTools Outlook.com Backup Tool. This software is available for Windows and Mac machines.
Prime Reason for Migrating Files & Folders from Outlook PST to Outlook.com
Outlook.com is a web-based suite of webmail, contacts, calendaring services offered by Microsoft. On the other hand, Microsoft Outlook is the email client application of the Microsoft Office suite which also includes a calendar, task manager, contact manager, etc. The basic difference between both of them is that Outlook.com is a web-based application and Outlook is a desktop-based application. So, Outlook.com users can access their data from any location as it is a web-based application but Outlook is a desktop-based application, all the data is saved on the user’s system. This can be counted as one of the main reasons why people are moving from Outlook to Outlook.com. Now the question arises, How to move Outlook to Outlook.com? When a user has decided to move from one email application to other, this is one of the most frequently asked questions. Migrating a user’s local Outlook data to an Outlook.com mailbox is a step-wise procedure Users just have to follow the steps given below carefully.
Manual Strategy to Move Outlook to Outlook.com
The manual strategy to move outlook folders to outlook.com is a five-step procedure explained below.
1. To Check Outlook.com is configured as a Microsoft Exchange account
The first thing you should check is whether your Outlook.com account has been configured as a Microsoft Exchange account in Outlook;
- Go to File option, click on Account Settings
If it says that “Microsoft Exchange” behind your Outlook.com account, then you can proceed further. But when it says that “Exchange ActiveSync”, then you have to re-add your Outlook.com account via Auto Account Setup. This will connect your account again as a Microsoft Exchange account.
2. Take Backup of your Data
Before migrating outlook to outlook.com, make sure to create a proper backup of Outlook PST file to save data from getting lost or damaged. Just make a copy of PST files, by keeping them in a safe location when Outlook is closed.
3. Check the size of your PST file
Despite the fact that size of an Outlook.com mailbox is unlimited, there are some restrictions in place to prevent “explosive growth” of your mailbox. This can be treated as an indication of malicious use of your mailbox or something else is wrong with it.
So, make sure to check the size of your PST file before starting to move files from outlook to outlook.com. It is always recommended that when PST file is larger than 4GB then first the user should only import a maximum of 4GB of data and then upload only up to 1GB every 2 or 3 days.
4. Upload your data to Outlook.com
Now, in this step, you are fully prepared to move your data items and folders from your current mailbox or Outlook PST to outlook.com to Outlook.com mailbox.
Default Mail Folders
While uploading content from the default mail folders such as Inbox and Sent Items, you may face difficulty as you can’t move these folders.
To move outlook folders to outlook.com, you first have to select all the items (CTRL+A), and then you can move all the selected items to their corresponding folder in your Outlook.com mailbox.
You can see your Mail Folder in Outlook by pressing CTRL+1 and if you want to see all your folders then press CTRL+6
Calendar
The best way to export outlook calendar to outlook.com is by switching your Calendar view to a list view via the View tab. To see all your Calendar folders in Outlook, press CTRL+2
Contacts
The process of moving over your contacts is similar to moving over the items from your Inbox folder. To make things easier to export outlook contacts to outlook.com you can switch to the List view via the Home tab.
Task
Moving your tasks is an easy process although there are two things to note here,
- Make sure you have selected your Tasks folder and not the To-Do list.
- To make sure that no filters are applied, select the Simple List or Detailed List. This step will allow you to move your history of tasks that are already completed from outlook to outlook.com.
To view all your Tasks folders in Outlook, press CTRL+4
5. Set Outlook.com as the default and remove PST from Outlook
- First, go to File option, then Account Settings and click on it
- Click on Email and remove your POP3 account if it is still listed
- Now, click on the Data Files and set the ost-file of your Outlook.com account as the default
- When prompted, restart Outlook
- Go to the Data File tab again
- Note the location of the PST file
- Select your PST file and press remove
6. Switch to Modern Authentication for Outlook.com
With the recent update, Microsoft has shifted to Modern authentication for Outlook.com. To smoothly move from Outlook to Outlook.com, ensure to enable Two-step verification and create app password Outlook.com.
Final Words
Sometimes users face issues moving files from outlook to outlook.com, so keeping all the issues in mind we came up with this write-up. This will surely help you in migrating your data such as Mail, Contacts, Calendars, tasks, etc without any hassle. You just have to follow the above-stated steps and you will be able to move Outlook data to Outlook.com successfully.
