#Restore Exchange Online Data

With AvePoint Cloud Backup, you can restore Exchange Online backup data to its original location, to another location, or restore the data to a storage location. Note that if the user account linked to the mailbox no longer exists in Microsoft 365, the mailbox cannot be restored.

AvePoint Cloud Backup can protect mailboxes that are placed on Litigation Hold but cannot keep the Litigation Hold configuration for the mailboxes since that configuration needs to be configured in Exchange Admin, which is out of reach of Exchange Online backup and restore.

*Note: If you want to restore the backup data to a storage location, you must have your own storage location configured. The default storage provided by AvePoint cannot be the destination of the restore.

Complete the steps below to restore Exchange Online data:

1. Navigate to the Restore > AvePoint Cloud Backup page, and then click the Exchange Online tile.

2. Select the items that you want to restore. You can choose one of the following methods to find the data to restore.

   • Search mode – Define a mailbox as the search scope and then use the properties to search for the items within the mailbox. Refer to the steps below:

     1. In the Name field, enter or select a mailbox. The default search condition is to search the backup data of that mailbox within the last backup cycle.

     2. In the Backup time range field, the time range of the last backup cycle is displayed by default. Click the Calendar button to customize the backup time range. The start date must be earlier than the end date. You can click Reset if you want to reset the settings. Click OK to save your customization.

     3. Select Mailbox, Folder, or Mailbox item from the Level list for the items you want to search. If you want to search for all folders or mailbox items within the selected mailbox, you can leave the search conditions empty. To search for specific folders, enter the folder name or the keywords in the Folder name field; to search for the Mailbox item level items, you can configure the following search conditions: Subject, Sent from, Sent to, and Date sent, and turn on/off the switch to configure whether to Search exclusively for mail items that contain attachments.

     4. Click Search to search the items according to the conditions you configured. The search conditions and the search results are displayed. The results include all backup items which meet the search conditions in Exchange Online mailboxes, Group mailboxes and Teams mailboxes. The search results table will display a maximum of 2000 items. You can edit the search conditions and click Search to adjust the search results.

     5. Find and select the item you want to restore from the search results. In the Recovery point column, click the Calendar button to select a backup job that backed up this item at the status that you want to restore, and click Apply.

     6. You can preview an email by clicking its subject, which will open the email in a new tab. While on the Email preview page, you can use the buttons located in the upper-right corner to download or print the email. Additionally, you can generate a public link for the email and set expiration date and password for added security.

     7. *Note: Emails that have sensitive labels with encrypted data or contain archived data cannot be previewed.

     8. Click the Restore button above the search result table to restore all selected items.

     9. Proceed to step 3 to continue with the Restore settings.

   • Calendar mode – Find a backup job that backed up the items at the time of the status you want to recover, and then search and select the items from the backup data of that backup job.

     1. In the calendar, all backup jobs of Exchange Online are displayed. You can select whether to display the finished with an exception or failed jobs in the calendar by selecting the Include jobs with only partial backup data option. Note that the data of these jobs may be incomplete. Hover over a backup job to show the backup job details.

     2. Select a backup job. By default, all backup data of Exchange Online within the backup cycle (excluding deleted contents), up to a maximum of 2000 items, is displayed in the table. To include deleted contents, click the Show data field and select All backup data within the backup cycle. You can also select the Backup data only from this recovery point option to only show the data backed up in the selected backup job.

     3. You can enter keywords to search the items, or you can click the backup data to browse the items you want to restore. For mailbox items, you can sort the Name, Sent from, and Sent time columns in either ascending or descending order.

     4. You can preview an email by clicking its subject, which will open the email in a new tab. While on the Email preview page, you can use the buttons located in the upper-right corner to download or print the email. Additionally, you can generate a public link for the email and set expiration date and password for added security.

     5. *Note: Emails that have sensitive labels with encrypted data or contain archived data cannot be previewed.

     6. The following actions are provided for the restore:

        • You can select the items you want to restore, and then click the Restore button above the table to restore all selected items directly at the same time. Note that you can only select the items at the same level in this way. Then, proceed to step 3 to continue with the Restore settings.

        • To restore mailboxes, you can select the mailboxes you want to restore, and then click the Queue for restore button above the table to add them for batch restore. After adding all desired mailboxes to the queue, click the Restore queue icon at the top of the page, and then click the Restore button to restore the mailboxes in one restore job.

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        • In the Queue for restore panel, administrators can click Want to bulk import objects to the queue? to import multiple mailboxes from CSV files.

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        • *Note: In the restore process, the Exchange Online mailboxes in the Restore queue will be restored sequentially from first to last as listed. The objects in the Restore queue are ordered by their addition time, from oldest to newest. The batch import maintains the order of objects as specified in the uploaded template.

        • If you leave the recovery point, the restore queue will be cleared.

3. If necessary, you can enter your comments for this restore job in the Description text box.

4. Choose where to restore the backup data to.

   • Restore the data to its original location – Restore the backup data to where the data are backed up.

   • Restore the data to another location – Restore the backup data to another destination. You can enter keywords to search for the restore destination. The items that can be selected as the restore destination are listed under the Search box. Select a container as the destination.

   • If you restore Exchange Online mailboxes in the Restore queue, you can select the Domain mapping mode. Then select a tenant and choose a configured domain mapping profile for domain mapping.

   • Then select Attach or Merge as the restore action:

   • Attach will restore the backup data as child objects beneath the selected node. For example, if you want to restore a folder to another folder and select Attach, the restored folder will become the subfolder of the destination folder.

   • Merge will add the contents to the destination node. For example, if you want to restore a folder to another folder and select Merge, the subfolders and contents of the restored folder rather than itself will directly become the subfolders and contents of the destination folder.

   • Restore the data to your storage – Restore the backup data to your own storage location. This option is not available if you are using the default storage location provided by AvePoint.

5. Select the items in the folder/mailbox that you want to restore. You can either restore all items in the folder/mailbox or restore items sent within a specified period by configuring the time range.

6. Select how to handle the conflicts in the restore job.

   • Container level conflict resolution – The mailbox and mailbox folders are the container level objects. Select a container level conflict resolution:

     • Skip – The destination container settings will remain unchanged.

     • Merge – The backup container settings and the content will be merged with the destination container.

   • Content level conflict resolution – The mailbox items are the content level objects. Select a content level conflict resolution:

     • Append – All mailbox items will be added to the destination container. This option has the best performance but may result in duplicate items if they already exist.

     • Skip – The conflicting destination content will be retained in the destination, and the backup data of the conflicting content will not be restored.

     • Overwrite – The conflicting destination content will be removed from the destination, and the backup data of the conflicting content will be restored.

7. When restoring mailboxes or folders through the Search mode, turn on/off the switch to define whether to Include the backup data for any previously deleted content in this backup cycle in the restore scope.

8. The Advanced settings is available if you are using BYOS. Click to expand the Advanced settings area.

9. Turn on/off the switch to define whether to allow restore jobs to rehydrate the data sets automatically, when the backup data is stored in the Azure archive storage tier. This field is only functional for the BYOS subscription type. For AvePoint default storage, the restore job will automatically rehydrate data.

   *Note: AvePoint recommends not storing the index database in the Azure archive storage tier.

10. Click Next to view the restore summary.

11. Click Restore to restore the selected items.