How to Migrate Calendar from IMAP to Office 365?

Read time 5 minutes

In our blog, IMAP Migration in Office 365 Admin Center, we talked about migrating emails from an IMAP account to Office 365 with the help of Internet Message Access Protocol. We also mentioned that using this approach, users can only migrate inbox items and email folders, but items like contacts, calendars, and tasks cannot be migrated.

Multiple IMAP email clients are used worldwide by small as well as large organizations for their day-to-day activities. Now, as most businesses are moving to cloud platforms for better productivity, collaboration, and security, it has become crucial for organizations to migrate their complete IMAP data to Office 365.

Well, migrating emails from IMAP to Office 365 is pretty easy using the manual approaches. But, when it comes to calendar migration from IMAP, not many options are available. However, if you want to migrate from Gmail, then there is a straight way to migrate IMAP calendar to Office 365 using MS Outlook.

Here is how you can migrate calendar from IMAP account to Office 365 with the help of MS Outlook.
Note: This method is only applicable via Outlook 2016 and 2013

Steps to Migrate Gmail Calendar to Office 365

This method consists of two main steps:

• Export Gmail calendar to a file
• Import calendar to Outlook on your computer

Note: If you don’t have Outlook installed on your system, you can import the calendar to Outlook Web app or Outlook on the Web.
We know, it’s not a one-click button process, but it is pretty easy if you follow the steps accurately.

1. Go to Gmail and sign in with your account.
2. Click on the menu icon in the upper right corner and select Calendar.
   
3. Go to Settings when the calendar window appears on the screen.
   
4. In the left menu, select Import & Export, and then click Export.
   
5. Select a location to save the file on your system.
6. Now, go to the downloaded location and unzip the file.

Once the file is extracted, you can import it to MS Outlook.

Before importing the calendar to Outlook, make sure it is configured with the Office 365 account where you want to export the IMAP contacts. After configuring the Office 365 account, follow the below steps:

1. Open MS Outlook on your system and click Calendar.
2. Now, go to the File tab and select the Open & Export option, and then click Import/Export.
3. The Import and Export wizard will appear on the screen, select Import an iCalendar or vCalendar file, and click Next.
   
4. Browse the files that you extracted from Gmail, and then select the file with gmail.com extension and click OK. A pop-up will appear on the screen, click Import.
   
5. Now, go to calendars in MS Outlook; you’ll find your Gmail calendar there.

Using this technique, you can easily migrate calendar from Gmail, but what if you want to migrate calendar from any other IMAP Server? Not every IMAP email client allows you to export calendars separately. Also, this method is only applicable for Outlook 2016 and 2013 and can be used only if you have configured MS Outlook with your Office 365 account.

Conclusion

A calendar holds information regarding events, meetings, and other crucial tasks that need to be executed. So, when businesses are moving their IMAP data to Office 365, it’s crucial to migrate calendars as well. Keeping that in mind, we covered a manual to migrate calendar from IMAP mailboxes to Office 365. Apart from that, If you need to import IMAP mailboxes to Office 365, then Kernel IMAP to Office 365 is a direct solution to migrate emails from IMAP to Office 365.