Microsoft 365, also known as Office 365, is attracting the attention of many IT organizations because of the new advanced features and benefits it offers. It is constantly attracting small and large organizations, and now everyone wants to move to Office 365, especially Lotus Notes users.

Organizations using the Lotus Notes environment are looking for a way to migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365 without data loss. That’s why we created this blog. Today, we are going to discuss the two best ways to get the job done smoothly.

Why migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365?

The biggest reason most IT admins love Microsoft 365 is because it gets the job done quickly and easily than on-premise platforms. There are other factors that make the user prefer to migrate from Lotus Notes to Office 365:

1. Lotus Notes is a desktop-based email client that can be accessed from the device it is configured on. In addition, Lotus Notes data is stored on the organization server, so you cannot access data from remote locations.
2. Malware and viruses from spam emails can affect your organization’s server.
3. Lotus Notes requires the constant attention of an IT person to maintain it.
4. It is quite difficult to scale your organization when using Lotus Notes
5. Only stores emails, contacts and calendars, etc.

All these limitations of Lotus Notes are overcome by Office 365 with many more features to help you with your daily work.

Using IMAP connector to migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365

Below is the step-by-step procedure for using the IMAP connector to migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365:

Step 1: First you need to back up the NSF file from your Lotus Notes environment. This is the most important step because we know that manual procedures can be quite risky.

Step 2: Create a separate mailbox for each user in the Lotus Notes environment.

Step 3: Now go to the TCP/IP section to enable the IMAP port:

• Open the Domino Administrator in the Lotus Notes app
• Go to the Configuration section.
• Open the server document to run the IMAP service
• Now go to Ports >> Internet Port >> Mail tab.
• In the Mail tab, enable the TCP/IP port status.
• Finally, click on the Save button to complete the changes.

Step 4: Use IMAP Connector to perform the synchronization: These steps synchronize Lotus Notes mailboxes and Office 365 mailboxes.

Restriction on the use of IMAP connector

1. Proxy and firewall: Your Internet connection may be blocked by a Lotus Notes proxy server and active firewall.
2. Manual data entry: The most complicated part of such a process is the manual migration of calendar data because the IMAP connector does not move the calendar.
3. File size limitation: IMAP connector imposes file size limitation during the migration from Lotus Notes to Office 365. It does not allow to migrate files over 1 GB in size.
4. Complicated process: Using this IMAP connector requires a higher level of technical knowledge of both Lotus Notes and Office 365.

An efficient way to migrate from Lotus Notes to Office 365

If you have the NSF file with you, use Migration from Lotus Notes to Office 365 Tool from SysTools to import NSF directly into Office 365. With this tool, Lotus Notes can be migrated to Office 365 with the need of file conversion or complicated approach.

In addition, during migration, the tool offers several exceptional features for a smoother migration journey, such as:

• Category filter to migrate some type of data from Lotus Notes to Office 365
• Date range filter only migrates emails from specific date range.
• Multiple options for mapping Lotus Notes and Office 365 mailboxes
• Delta Migration feature to migrate newly arrived emails during the migration process.
• Generates a summary and detailed report to check the migrated data.

Following are the steps to migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365:

1. First, to download the automated tool and launch it.

2. Go to Activate tab for activating the tool for the DEMO or FULL version.

3. From the Setup tab, select source as Lotus Notes and destination as Office 365

4. In Source, enter the Lotus Notes Admin details and browse the NSF file path. Then activate for the authentication of entered data.

5. In Destination, enter the Office 365 administrator and project information. To create a project for Office 365, click the Project setting link in the tool window.

6. From the User tab, select the option to assign Lotus Notes and Office 365 user accounts from data migration.

7. Once all fields are completed, click on the Validate button for authenticating the entered data.

8. Finally, press the Start migration to migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365.

9. During the migration process, the tool provides the Live preview of the migration and the option to Stop migration†

10. Once the migration is complete, use the Download report option to generate a report to check the migrated data.

That is it! In just these 10 steps, the administrator can easily perform the migration from Lotus Notes to O365. Once the process is complete, you can check the migrated data and use the Delta Migration feature to migrate emails received during the migration process.

Final Thoughts

Switching from Lotus Notes to Office 365 is a good idea, but choosing the right method can save you time and effort. Therefore, in this article, we have explained two methods to extensively migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365. Try both methods on dummy accounts before deploying them to an entire organization. The demo versions of the tool come with 2 free user licenses for full data migration without any limitation.

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