Using eDiscovery to Export Emails to PST

eDiscovery in Office 365 allows you to create a search based on several criteria such as recipient, date ranges and senders to build a search that you can export. This can be done on SharePoint items as well as emails. In this article we will look at creating a search for exporting emails from a tenant.This can come in handy for several reasons, maybe a law group is needing a date range of emails to run an investigation on or maybe an employee is leaving so you want to export the emails to have them for down the road.The first step is to set the correct permissions. Even global admins will need to do this step so you need to do this once for each tenant. Go to https://compliance.microsoft.com/permissions and login as the global admin account and expand the Microsoft Purview Solutions section. Click on roles.

Click on the eDiscovery Manager group

Click on edit next to the eDiscovery Admin section. Add yourself to the list and click save.

Once you save this takes some time to update. Wait a couple hours otherwise you might get errors later when we try to export.Once you have waited enough time head over to https://compliance.microsoft.com/classicediscoveryClick on create case and name it something descriptive.Once it’s created click on it go into the case.

Click on the searches tab and then new search button

Again name this search something like the date range or what you are searching for.

In our case we want to search for emails so check the slider next to exchange mailboxes and then you can filter by the user if needed.

For the condition we will be searching a date range so click on the add condition and choose date. Choose the starting and ending date you want to search for.

Click on submit and it will begin the search. Normally this process should only take a few minutes.

Once it’s done you will be given the status and what it found

To export the emails click on actions and then then export results

Depending on if you chose more than 1 email you can adjust the settings as needed. If you only searched one account, then the default settings should work fine. Click on export.

This process can take some time. Check the exports tab and wait for it to finish. Once it’s finished use the download results button at the top.

Make sure you use IE or Edge on this step as it will download a file to initiate the download and it works best in those 2 browsers.

Copy the export key and paste it into the export tool and choose the path to save the exported file.

Allow the download to finish and then you will have the PST file ready to be attached to Outlook or saved somewhere it can be accessed down the road.

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