Your Guide to Microsoft 365 Data Export/Import
Posted on 9 March 2026 by Beaming SupportIf you are looking to export all of your data from your Microsoft 365 data from your tenant, this is indeed possible but requires some groundwork before it can be completed. In order to proceed with this, you will require full administrative access, not only to your old Microsoft 365 tenant, but also to a new Microsoft 365 tenant of which you wish to import that data into.
There are two main ways to perform this task, one is a full export of all data from the old tenant, this would include Exchange Online data (email) and OneDrive/SharePoint data, then re-import into the new M365 tenant. However, the more efficient way of doing this would be to enable cross-tenant trust and perform a direct tenant-to-tenant migration, this way all of the data moves between Microsoft resources directly without a full export/import which takes far more time and can also introduce errors and inconsistencies.
Please do note that the export/import type migration does not include Teams data/groups, SharePoint shortcuts, SharePoint permissions or any other custom apps or settings which were bespoke to your old tenant.
Option 1) Full export/import
If you want to proceed with the full export/import, this is a much more manual task which will require significantly more time, but is indeed possible. The way to do this would be to firstly agree a time-window for the cutoff, this is important because as soon as the export begins, it will effectively be a snap-short of your data from that point, any emails or other data that is used after the export begins, will not be migrated and would need to either be manually moved afterwards, or left behind.
Once agreed, the first step would be to ensure that the new accounts on the new tenant are all set up and ready to receive mail, this includes applying the licences to the new accounts accordingly. Once the new accounts are ready and the new domain on the new tenant is verified and test email has been confirmed as received, it would then be time to apply forwarders from the old mail accounts to the new mail accounts (If required, if the domain itself on the old tenant is being retired and you do not wish to receive any further correspondence to the old domain, then this is not needed).
Once decided, it is time to begin the export of data, this is done by an administrator using the Compliance centre. You will firstly need to ensure that your administrative account has the correct permissions to use the eDiscovery centre, this is done by navigating to purview.microsoft.com, settings, roles and scopes, Role groups, locating eDiscovery Manager and adding your administrator account as an administrator for this role. Once done you will be able to access the “eDiscovery” tool under the “Solutions” area. We can then “content search”, initially, it would be a good idea to start off this export by testing with a single user.
To do this first test, click “content search” and add a user in the “add sources” area, no conditions are to be inputted, otherwise this will filter the results and not provide a comprehensive .PST file for the users whole Mailbox. Once done, click “Run Query”, this may take some time to run, but once complete, the administrator will be able to download a complete .PST file for that user’s Outlook data.
With regards to the OneDrive/SharePoint data, an administrator will need to grant themselves permissions to the data (or sit with the user) and sync the data to a local PC/Drive, once synced, this would then need to be moved onto an external storage device, ready for its next hop, before the account is then disconnected from the device once again.
Option 2) Tenant-To-Tenant Migration
To perform a full tenant-to-tenant migration, which is the best way to ensure data integrity and less manual intervention (This is the Microsoft recommended way!), you will firstly need to ensure that the users are all created in the new tenant that need to be there, as well as licenced and with a valid domain name.
Once the above is prepped, the next step is to allow cross-tenant access, this is done from within the Microsoft Entra Admin centre -> External Identities -> Cross-tenant access settings (Note – this needs to be done in both tenants) Add the other tenant as an organization
- Enable Inbound and Outbound trust
- Allow user and group sync
- Allow Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams migrations
This is required for native migrations.
Once this is done, it is then a case of ensuring that the old tenant (also referred to as the source tenant), is clean, therefore, we have removed any unused mailboxes, groups, Teams, SharePoint sites etc.
Now that the source tenant is clean, the link between the tenants is set up and the destination tenant is ready to receive the migrations, the next stage is to migrate the exchange mailboxes, this is done via the Microsoft Admin Centre -> Exchange -> Migration -> Add migration batch -> Cross-tenant migration.
We will then map the source mailbox to the target mailbox, for example johnsmith@sourcetenant.com will map to johnsmith@destinationtenant.com, this links them together and allows for the data to be pushed from old to new.
Similar steps are then completed for OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams within their relevant admin centres.
Once all migration batches are completed, you can then either move the domain from the source tenant to the new, or remove it entirely from the old tenant. You can then also decommission all licences from the old tenant, all user accounts and all other data, therefore leaving the tenant empty and unused.