Migrate from Microsoft 365 to Another IMAP it's not easy anymore but it can be done [procedures]

[mshannaq]

As Imapsync says in docs:

Can I use imapsync to transfer from or to Office365 accounts?

Yes, but it's not easy anymore for new Azure accounts.

For now, authentication to Office365 with Imapsync is not a piece of
cake (June 2023).

One authentication method is the LOGIN method, the second is the app
password and the third is the OAUTH2 method.

So you have to do 3 steps 🥹😅

Today I spent a couple of hours to do it , and finally it works , and I would like to share the procedures that I did:

Read it all before try...

First of all you have to create app password for the account you want to migrate (see https://ae.godaddy.com/help/create-app-passwords-40980)

and to do that you have to make sure you enable multi-factor authentication (see https://ae.godaddy.com/help/enable-or-disable-multi-factor-authentication-32039) and make sute that you enable force multi-factor authentication for the users you want to migrate from (https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/UserManagement/Multifactorverification.aspx#) (need you to sign in with your microsoft 356 account)

then after that return to your account (on https://mysignins.microsoft.com/security-info ) and create app password for microsoft 365 account (and keep the password with you in safe please because it is shown once).

note: you will not see the "App Password" Choice until you activate multi-factor authentication for that user.

after that you can use imapsync so it have to be installed on your machine (see https://imapsync.lamiral.info/#install) (on my mac i use brew install imapsync)

but first you have to generate oauth2 token as described in https://imapsync.lamiral.info/oauth2/oauth2_office365/README.txt by

wget https://imapsync.lamiral.info/oauth2/oauth2_office365/oauth2_office365_with_imap

then run oauth2_office365_with_imap as

on mac i use:

./oauth2_office365_with_imap email-you-want-to-migrate@yourdomain.com

this will open a browser and ask you to sign in and generate oauth2 token , accept the request to continue.

This will create token file, The tokens will printed on the screen and also generated in the sub-directory "tokens" which has to
exist before contains 2 lines , one for the access token and the second for refresh token

example:

./imapsync --host1 outlook.office365.com  --user1 email-you-want-to-migrate@yourdomain.com  --oauthaccesstoken1  /root/tokens/oauth2_tokens_email@domain.txt  --host2 imap.newserver --user2 newimap@you.com  --password2  "YourImapPasswprd"   --automap --justlogin

This will try to login on each servers, if everything fine then remove --justlogin from the command and run it again to start migrate (sync)

Note: when you try to run the command the terminal may ask you for the email password , enter the app password that you create for the email in above steps.

and destination email account should be exists and accessable via IMAP also

(Updates) Note that : For emails that does not has 2fa enabled I notices that I can just create oauth2 token only and sync its contents without need to enforce it to use app password. 😅

Thanks

Resources that help me much more:

• https://imapsync.lamiral.info/FAQ.d/FAQ.Office365.txt
• https://imapsync.lamiral.info/oauth2/oauth2_office365/README.txt

[gilleslamiral]

So you have to do 3 steps

Since you ended up having to do OAUTH2, I don't understand why you didn't start doing OAUTH2 and only it.

[mshannaq]

that what i discovered lately 🥹

but also I see that while migration account that contains big email count for example 500K email messages for example , it take too long to migrate and fial also. even if I refresh the token every 30 minutes . it just stuck and do nothing.

[gilleslamiral]

Which imapsync release do you use?

https://imapsync.lamiral.info/ChangeLog

revision 2.230
date: 2023/01/24 14:36:04;  author: gilles;  state: Exp;  lines: +190 -119
Bugfix. Reread oauth2 files upon disconnection

Latest: https://imapsync.lamiral.info/imapsync