1222 - How to backup and recover Exchange Mail : TitanHQ Helpdesk

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Introduction

Backup and recovery of Exchange Mail forms part of our Microsoft 365 service offering. Watch our video below to learn more.

To add a backup set and do a first recovery, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Microsoft 365 global administrator for your tenant organisation. To do subsequent recoveries, you only need to be a RedApp company administrator and a Microsoft 365 Exchange admin. Read more about Microsoft's admin roles in this article on their knowledge base.

What is supported?

Redstor currently supports the following:

Archive mailbox backup and recovery
Calendar backup and recovery
Contacts backup and recovery
Export to PST
Multiple mailbox recovery
Recover back to Exchange (new folder)
Shared mailbox backup and recovery
Single item recovery (Mail, Contacts, Calendar)

What is not supported?

Group mailboxes
(Note: These are not the same as shared mailboxes, e.g. they do not contain contacts, and the conversations appear as threads. A group mailbox is automatically created whenever a user creates a new Microsoft 365 group in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Group mailboxes are not created for groups created in the Entra Admin Center. Read more on Microsoft's knowledge base here.)
Guest users
Individual EML or MSG files
Just-in-time (JIT) or "viral" tenants
Private events in Calendar
Public contacts
Public folders

Please also note the following limitations:

It is not possible to exclude specific file types from backups.
Data with fidelity is only available via Microsoft Exchange Web Services (EWS).
Large backups and archive mailbox backups may experience throttling, which results in long backup durations.
Poor performance is seen on Linux.
With PST restores, there is a known limitation relating to certain contact fields, including email address. Read more in Article 1574.

Guides

Use the guides below to manage your Exchange backups.

How to add a backup set

To add a backup set, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Microsoft 365 global administrator for your tenant organisation. Read more about Microsoft's admin roles in this article on their knowledge base.

1. On the RedApp home page, go to My Company or to the relevant customer company in the sidebar on the left.

2. To add a new backup set, go to Microsoft 365. If you do not see Microsoft 365 listed, you will need to add it as a product.

3. Click Add at the top right and go to Add backup set.

4. Select Exchange and click Sign in.

5. You will need to sign into Microsoft 365 and provide Redstor with permission to access your data. Click Accept.

Note: If you encounter an "Access denied" error, click here.6. You can now make your backup selection based on your organisational structure. The Microsoft tenant ID for the specific tenant is shown at the top of the page to assist in backup selection.

For group-based backup selection:

Note: These groups refer to Microsoft Entra groups (previously known as Azure Active Directory security groups), and not to Redstor backup groups as they are known to Storage Platform Console users.

Watch our video or follow the steps below.

Select Groups and click Next.

By default, all groups will be selected for backup. To retain this selection and proceed, click Save.

Alternatively, you can deselect the groups you do not want to backup, or deselect all and select only the groups you want to backup. Note that it may take a while for all groups to load.

You can drill down into groups to select specific subgroups for backup.

You can also use the search field to find a specific group.

Once you are satisfied with your selection, click Save and proceed to Step 7 of this guide. If you do not want to create this backup set, click Cancel at the top right.

You will be asked to confirm that you want to discard the backup set. Click Discard.

For user-based backup selection:

Note: If you intend to select a large number of users and regularly make changes to the selection, it is easier to use this workaround.

Watch our video or follow the steps below.

Select Users and click Next.

By default, all mailboxes (users) will be selected for backup. To retain this selection and proceed, click Save. You can also enable Include new accounts to ensure that future additions to this tenant are automatically added to the backup selection.

Note: If you need to back up an archive mailbox, read more here.

Alternatively, you can deselect the mailboxes you do not want to backup, or deselect all and select only the mailboxes you want to backup. Note that it may take a few moments for all mailboxes to load. Once you are satisfied with your selection, click Save and proceed to Step 7 of this guide.

If you do not want to create this backup set, click Cancel at the top right.

You will be asked to confirm that you want to discard the backup set. Click Discard.

7. Once you have saved your selection, you will be taken to the home page for the new backup set, showing the relevant M365 tenant ID on the Backup selection card. The backup set name (in this case "Exchange") will appear in the sidebar.

To queue a backup immediately, click on the menu icon at the top right and go to Backup.

Once your first backup has completed, you can customise which columns you see in the backups table. To do this, click on the columns icon on the right, next to the search bar.

Select which columns you would like to see, then click Apply.

To view an audit trail of key actions and which users performed them, click on the inspect icon at the top right of the page.

How to edit a backup set

1. On the backup set home page, go to Edit from the Backup selection card.

2. Select/deselect the groups/mailboxes you want to add/remove and click Save to apply your changes.

Note:

Accounts that have been removed from the backup selection are still retained on the Storage Platform until you permanently delete them using the Storage Platform Console. Read more in Article 1384 .
If you are seeing unlicensed mailboxes being backed up, Article 1586 explains why.
If you need to switch from user-based to group-based backup selection, see Article 1365 .

You can also use the search field to find a specific group/mailbox.

To discard your changes, click Go back at the bottom right or Cancel at the top right.

You will be asked to confirm that you want to discard the changes. Click Discard.

The new number of groups/mailboxes selected will now be shown on the Backup selection card.

How to add Calendar and Contacts to a backup set

1. On the home page for the backup set, go to Edit on the Overview card.

2. Tick the boxes for Calendar and Contacts and click on the check mark.

Calendar and Contacts will be included from the next backup.

How to configure the backup schedule for a backup set

1. On the home page for the relevant backup set, click on Edit on the Backup schedule card.

2. Select the days on which you would like backups to run, as well as a backup time. You can choose between daily and custom backups.

For daily backups, select the number of backups per day (1 or 3). In the case of 3 backups per day, the first backup will run at the specified backup time. The second and third backups will run at 8 hours and 16 hours after the specified backup time. For example, if the specified backup time is 02:00, backups will run at 02:00, 10:00, and 18:00.
Note: Multiple daily backups is only available as part of our M365 Premium edition. If you do not see the option to schedule multiple daily backups, you are on a legacy pricing plan. If you would like to enable multiple daily backups, please speak to your account manager about upgrading.
For custom backups, select the days and time that you want your backups to run.

3. Click the check mark at the top right to save your schedule.

How to recover a backup set

To do a first recovery, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Microsoft 365 global administrator for your tenant organisation. To do subsequent recoveries, you only need to be a RedApp company administrator and a Microsoft 365 Exchange admin. Read more about Microsoft's admin roles in this article on their knowledge base.

Watch our video for an overview of your recovery options, or follow the steps below.

1. On the home page for the relevant backup set, locate the mailbox you want to recover. Click on the menu icon and select Recover. You will see three recovery options, which are discussed below.

You can also select multiple mailboxes to recover.

Note: If you need to recover multiple mailboxes, it is advised to recover them in bulk and not in sequence. It is not possible to queue a recovery while another recovery for the same backup set is in progress.

To recover an individual item (e.g. an email), drill down into the relevant mailbox and select the item. Click Recover and proceed to Step 2 of this guide. For more on recovering Calendar events and Contacts, see Article 1590.

You can also select a specific backup date to recover, and then select All to recover everything from that backup.

Use the Search field if you need to find a specific item to recover.

2. When recovering, you can choose between recovering to a different account, recovering to a new folder, or exporting to PST format.

After selecting any recovery option, you will need to authenticate with your RedApp credentials as well as with your Microsoft 365 administrator credentials. You will then see a notification at the bottom of the page to indicate that the recovery has started.

To start recovering, proceed based on your choice of recovery method.

If you select Different account, follow the steps below:

Scroll down or search and select an account to recover to, then click Continue. Note that the target account must be in the same backup set as the source account.

Check the details and click Confirm & Restore.

The selected items will be recovered to a new folder named Redstor Restores in the target mailbox, which you can find in Outlook by expanding the Folder Pane on the left. The structure will be Redstor Restores > (timestamp folder) > Mailbox > (source folder of recovered item).

If you select New folder, follow the steps in this video:

Your selected items will be recovered to a new folder named Redstor Restores in the original mailbox, which you can find in Outlook by expanding the Folder Pane on the left. The structure will be Redstor Restores > (timestamp folder) > Mailbox > (source folder of recovered item).

If you select Export to .pst, follow the steps in this video:

In the case of a PST export, the RedApp admin user who initiated the restore will receive an email containing a download link to the exported Outlook Data File. This file can then be downloaded and imported into the relevant Outlook instance by going to File > Open & Export > Open Outlook Data File. Note that downloaded PST files will be smaller in size than the corresponding backups reported in the RedApp. Read more in Article 1547.

The selected mailbox/es will receive a notification email to say they are being restored.

For more on PST imports, see this Microsoft article.

Note: Mail, Contacts and Calendar items are recovered with all the original metadata.