I had a client this week who wanted to migrate their emails out of Zoho into Microsoft 365. Normally I would use IMAP when migrating data from another platform into 365, however, all the information I found suggested this wasn’t possible with Zoho. Every article or forum post I read said the same thing – you could either export each folder from Zoho as a .eml file (yuck!), or you could purchase a tool to automate the migration. I don’t like purchasing software tools for a single job, and frankly, if a tool can automate this, there is probably already a process. Time to start digging!
A test run failed with a logon failure: invalid username or password. I knew these were correct as I could log into Zoho with them. Some cloud providers allow ‘App Passwords’ to bypass multi-factor authentication for external connections and I wondered if MFA was blocking it. So, I tried with an App Password – same error. A bit more digging revealed Zoho disables IMAP by default. Into Settings and enable IMAP for the user account, also discovering the server address I was using was incorrect! Zoho has a different server address for Australia and New Zealand than what their knowledgebase states. Armed with this information, and with IMAP now enabled, reconfigured the IMAP migration from within 365 and… success! Migration complete and I didn’t have to purchase a specialist tool.
Zoho does have built-in options for sharing calendar, contacts, and tasks with Microsoft 365 accounts, just not email. In this case, the client only wanted their emails migrated.
Are you looking to switch to Microsoft 365? Talk to us about your requirements, and we’ll ensure a smooth transition.
Comments