Restoring an Exchange Online Mailbox to a Point in Time

Point-in-time restores are useful when you need to revert a mailbox to a state just before an undesired incident occurred in the mailbox.

You can restore messages to a specific date and time. To restore a mailbox or messages to a specific date and time while maintaining the folder structure, you must create a recovery point, and then restore the mailbox or messages from the recovery point.

Restore Messages to a Specific Date and Time

1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Applications > Office 365.

   The Office 365 apps page appears.

2. Click the app that contains the mailbox that you want to recover.

   The app page appears.

3. On the Mailboxes tab,select the mailbox that you want to restore, click the action button , and then click Restore > Restore messages.

   The mailbox content appears.

4. In the left pane, select the mailbox, and then click the search button.

   More search capabilities appear.

5. Under Advanced options, for the Received filter, create your own date range, and then click Search.

   All of the messages that meet your search criteria appear in the results.

6. Click Restore, and then select Restore all items matching search criteria.

   The Restore options dialog box appears, with options for restoring to the original location already selected.

7. For if the message exists, specify what to do with existing items:

   • To not overwrite existing items, select Skip.

   • To overwrite existing items, select Unconditionally overwrite. If the existing items have not been modified then they are not overwritten during restore.

8. Click Submit.

Create a Recovery Point

1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Applications > Office 365.

   The Office 365 apps page appears.

2. Click the app that contains the mailbox that you want to restore.

   The app page appears.

3. On the Mailboxes tab, click the mailbox for which you want to create a recovery point.

   The mailbox page appears.

4. Select the date and time for the recovery point, and then click Create recovery point.

   A message prompts you to confirm the recovery point creation.

5. Click Yes.

   A message displays the recovery point job ID.

   By default, the recovery point expires in 30 days.

Select the Recovery Point to Browse and Restore the Mailbox

1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Applications > Office 365.

   The Office 365 apps page appears.

2. Click the app that contains the mailbox that you want to restore.

   The app page appears.

3. On the Recovery Points tab, in the row for the recovery point, click the action button , and then click Restore > Restore messages or Restore > Restore mailbox.