Backup Office 365 Shared Mailboxes – Complete Guide

Updated On - June 6, 2026 by Nasir Khan | Reading Time: 3 minutes

Office 365 offers multiple collaboration tools such as Exchange Online, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Among its useful features are Shared Mailboxes, which allow multiple users to access and manage emails. Shared mailboxes are an integral part of any organization as they boost collaboration.

In this blog, we’ll discuss what a shared mailbox is, why it’s important to backup Office 365 shared mailboxes, the available manual methods, and the best automated solution to secure your data.

What are Shared Mailboxes?

A Shared Mailbox in Office 365 (Microsoft 365) is a special type of mailbox that allows multiple users to send, receive, and manage emails from a common email address—without needing a separate license.

Why Backup Office 365 Shared Mailboxes?

Backing up an Office 365 Shared Mailbox is very important, even though Microsoft 365 is a secure cloud platform, it doesn’t guarantee full protection from every type of data loss. Below are the main reasons why you should back up shared mailboxes:

1. Protection from Accidental Deletion: Sometimes, emails or folders in a shared mailbox can be deleted by mistake; recovering those messages becomes very difficult or even impossible. Backup ensures you can easily restore them whenever needed.

2. Long-Term Access: Office 365 keeps deleted items only for a short time. After that, they get permanently removed. A backup gives you long-term access to old emails, even after Microsoft’s retention period ends.

3. Easy Data Migration: If you want to migrate to another platform or Office 365 tenant, having a backup simplifies the migration and restoration process, saving time and preventing data loss.

4. Manage Storage with Cost-Efficiency: By backing up old emails in the local device, you can free up space from your Office 365 cloud account. It may help you to manage the cost of your subscription.

Available Methods to Backup Office 365 Shared Mailboxes:

Here, we will elaborate on two solutions for accomplishing the backup process of Office 365 Shared Mailboxes. After reading both of them, you can choose accordingly.

1- Manual Method

Export Shared Mailbox to PST Using Outlook

You can back up a shared mailbox by exporting it to a PST file through Outlook.

Steps:

  1. Open Outlook on your system and sign in with your Office 365 account.
  2. Go to File → Account Settings → Account Settings.
  3. Under the Email tab, choose the shared mailbox.
  4. Click Open & Export → Import/Export.
  5. Choose Export to a file → Outlook Data File (.pst).
  6. Select the shared mailbox folders to back up.
  7. Choose a destination path and click Finish.

Use eDiscovery to Export Shared Mailbox Data

Office 365 eDiscovery can also backup Office 365 shared mailboxes data to a PST file.

Steps:

  1. Log in to Microsoft Purview Compliance Center.
  2. Go to Content SearchNew Search.
  3. Enter the shared mailbox name.
  4. Run the search and wait for results.
  5. Once complete, click Export Results → Download Results.

Things You Should Know Before Backing Up Manually:

  • You will need sufficient technical knowledge to perform the manual method. A wrong step can be dangerous.
  • It is a very time-consuming process; large items often get stuck.
  • Using the manual method, you may lose the data and structure of your folders.
  • Not suitable for large mailboxes or multiple shared mailboxes.
  • There will be no advanced options to get the customized results.

2 – A Professional Solution with Regain Office 365 Backup Tool

With the help of Regain Office 365 Backup Tool, you can perform all the backup processes very easily and that too with complete accuracy. To perform this task, you need to follow some simple steps, which are as follows:

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  1. Launch the Regain Office 365 Backup Tool.
  2. Click on the Mailbox Backup button. Step2
  3. Log in with your Office 365 admin credentials. Step3
  4. The software supports basic as well as multi-factor authentication. Step4
  5. There are multiple file formats available. Choose the required file format (PST, EML, MBOX, etc.). Moreover, you can set the resultant PST file size. Step5
  6. Browse the destination path to save your backup.

Some Key Features Offered By the Regain Office 365 Backup Tool:

  1. There are no size limitations on the Office 365 mailbox for backup.
  2. With the help of this utility, you can also back up Exchange Server (on-premises).
  3. Along with the Shared Mailboxes, users can also backup Primary Mailbox, Archive Mailbox and Public Folder.
  4. Migrate Office 365 to all IMAP servers with the Regain Office 365 Backup tool.
  5. Backup Office 365 mailboxes to PST, EML, EMLX, MBOX, MSG, vCard, and other formats.
  6. This software is compatible with all Windows OS.
  7. Use the free demo version of the Regain Office 365 Backup tool to check its compatibility.

Conclusion:

Shared mailboxes are essential for team collaboration in Office 365, but without proper backup, you could risk losing critical communications. For a reliable, secure, and automated solution, use the Regain Office 365 Backup Tool — your one-stop solution to restore, and manage and backup Office 365 shared mailboxes data effortlessly.

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Author: Nasir Khan

I am Nasir Khan from India, working as a Content Developer in Regain Software. Here I am writing about our products and their updates. And writing some free solutions from converting emails or Cloud Migration process. We have tools like Email Converter, Emails backup and Cloud migration.