How to create an offline archive (.pst) file for any number of mailboxes using only the Office 365 admin portal.

What you will need

• Internet Explorer 9+ or Google Chrome with the "Click to Run" extension
• An account with an SMTP address and admin priviledges for the company whose mail you are archiving. NB an admin account without a mailbox will not work

Initial setup

This only needs to be done once for each organisation you ned to archive mail for:

1. Log in with your admin acount and go to the Office 365 admin center if you aren't there already
2. Open the Exchange admin center from under the ADMIN heading in the Office 365 admin center
3. Select admin roles from under the permissions heading
4. Double-click on the Discovery Management role group to open the Role Group editor window
5. Under Roles:, click the + to open the Select a Role window.
6. Find and select the Mailbox Import Export role then click [ add -> ] then [ ok ] to add the role to the Discovery Management role group
7. Back in the Role Group edit window, under the Members: section, click on the + to open the Select Members window.
8. Find and select your current user account and click [ add -> ] then [ ok ] to add the account to the role group membership
9. Close the Exchange admin center window

Creating an in-place eDiscovery & hold search

This needs to be done once for each set of mailboxes you wish to archive simultaneously but can be re-used if the mailboxes need to be archived again at some later date:

1. Log in with your admin acount and go to the Office 365 admin center if you aren't there already
2. Open the Exchange admin center from under the ADMIN heading in the Office 365 admin center
3. Select in-place eDiscovery & hold from under the compliance management heading
4. Click on the + to create a new search - this can search for contents within mailboxes or, for this purpose, an entire mailbox.
5. Give your new search a name - this is required - and an optional description so you remember what it's for next time. Click the [ next ] button.
6. On the next page, select Specify mailboxes to search if it isn't already then click the + to open the Select Mailbox window.
7. Find and select the mailbox(es) you want to archive then click [ add -> ] for each one, then [ ok ] to add them to the search.
8. Click [ next ] to move to the Search query page and select Include all content to archive the whole mailbox. Click the [ next ] button.
9. On the In-Place Hold settings page, click on the [ finish ] button to create the search. Wait for the save operation to complete then click the [ close ] button.

Using an existing search to archive a mailbox

This is done every time a new copy of an archive needs to be created.

1. Log in with your admin acount and go to the Office 365 admin center if you aren't there already
2. Open the Exchange admin center from under the ADMIN heading in the Office 365 admin center
3. Select in-place eDiscovery & hold from under the compliance management heading
4. Select an existing search to create the archive file from.
5. Click on the â button to export the search results to a PST file. This downloads then runs the eDiscovery PST Export Tool
6. Click the [ Browse ] button to select a suitable save location then click [ Start ] to begin the download.
7. The tool will ask for a username and password to access the download; this is the same admin account used to start the export. Enter the credentials and click [ OK ]
8. Wait for the download to complete.