Backup Microsoft 365: FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

What can cloudHQ back up in Microsoft 365?

cloudHQ can back up the main Microsoft 365 (Office 365) data of every user in your organization:

  • OneDrive for Business files.
  • Microsoft 365 Mail (Outlook emails).
  • Microsoft 365 Contacts.
  • SharePoint Document Libraries (the files in them).

For an overview of the whole setup, read IT Admin: How to back up Microsoft 365 (Office 365).

Where can I store my Microsoft 365 backup?

You choose the storage service. cloudHQ can back up Microsoft 365 to Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive (including Google Shared Drives), SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, personal OneDrive, Egnyte, and WebDAV.

Is the backup real-time or scheduled?

cloudHQ does not back up on a schedule. After the first full transfer, it keeps watching for changes and copies new and changed files and new emails automatically. How quickly a change appears in your backup varies. The first transfer of a large account takes longer, and later copies also depend on Microsoft 365 availability and on the request limits Microsoft applies, which can slow things down. You can see the state of each backup pair in cloudHQ.

Can I recover an earlier version of a file or a file that was deleted?

Yes, for files that cloudHQ copied, as long as the backup pair has the option Archive files before they are changed or deleted by sync turned on. It must be on for a backup. With it, each time cloudHQ replaces a file in your backup storage, the old version is saved in a folder called cloudHQ_archive, and a file deleted in Microsoft 365 is moved there instead of being removed. You can then copy the file or folder you need back from that folder.

This is file-level recovery for what cloudHQ copied after the backup started. It is not a full restore of your Microsoft 365 organization. Read How to protect cloudHQ backup from accidental deletion or changes.

Can I restore backed-up emails into Outlook?

Your backed-up emails are saved as separate files in your backup storage, organized by date, so you can open, search and download any message. Our guides do not describe an automatic import back into Outlook or Exchange. The restore guide for email backups covers restoring to Gmail only. If you need to bring emails back into Microsoft 365, email support@cloudhq.net before you start.

Who can set up the backup for the whole company?

A Microsoft 365 administrator. Open the cloudHQ setup, choose For IT Admins: Multiple Users Setup, choose Microsoft 365 as your organization’s cloud platform, select the users and the service you want to use for the backup, and cloudHQ creates a backup sync pair for each user.

Before the first setup, install cloudHQ in your Microsoft 365 domain: IT Admin: How to install cloudHQ to your Microsoft 365 domain.

What do I have to prepare in Microsoft 365 before I start?

Three things:

  • You must be a Microsoft 365 administrator. You can check this in the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal.
  • The users’ mailboxes and OneDrive accounts must already exist. cloudHQ does not create them. Microsoft creates a mailbox when a license that includes Exchange Online is assigned. If a user’s OneDrive has never been created, the user can sign in to OneDrive once, which our setup guides ask for, or you can pre-provision OneDrive for your users.
  • To back up users’ OneDrive files, the administrator must be added as an administrator of the users’ personal OneDrive sites. See the next question.

Provisioning and permission changes in Microsoft 365 can take some time, and longer for many accounts. Check that every account and permission is ready before you continue, instead of waiting a fixed time.

How do I give the administrator access to users’ OneDrive accounts?

By default, Microsoft 365 does not let an administrator open users’ OneDrive for Business files. You can add yourself as a site collection administrator for each user in the SharePoint Admin Center, which works well for a few users, or run a SharePoint Online Management Shell script that does it for all users at once. Step-by-step instructions for both options are in IT Admin: How to configure impersonation for Office 365 OneDrive Business.

If you skip this step, cloudHQ shows a warning when you add the accounts, and you can continue after you complete the steps.

How is my backup organized?

Each user gets a separate folder in your backup storage, named after the user’s email address, for example Backup_bucket/bob@acme.com/Microsoft 365 OneDrive (bob@acme.com). OneDrive files keep the same folder structure as in OneDrive.

Emails are organized by date: year, then month, then day, with one file for each email. For example, 2026 / 10 / 08 / holds the emails of that day.

How do I back up Microsoft 365 emails to Amazon S3 or Glacier?

First prepare an Amazon S3 bucket and an Amazon IAM user for cloudHQ, then run the multiple users setup and choose Amazon S3 as the backup location. Amazon S3 encrypts new objects at rest by default. If your policy asks for more, such as your own KMS key, see Amazon’s guide to default encryption and How to enforce AWS server-side encryption on your Amazon backup bucket. You can also move older data to Glacier with an Amazon archiving rule. Follow these guides in order:

How do I back up Microsoft 365 emails to Google Drive?

Use the same multiple users setup and choose Google Drive as the backup location. Your Microsoft 365 emails are then saved in Google Drive as PDFs once the first transfer finishes. See IT Admin: How to back up all your Office 365 Email accounts.

Can I back up Microsoft 365 contacts?

Can I back up SharePoint document libraries?

Yes. You can back up a SharePoint Document Library to Google Drive, a Google Shared Drive, or Amazon S3 / Glacier. Pick the site, the Document Library and the folder in the cloudHQ file browser: the first level lists SharePoint sites, the second level lists Document Libraries, and the levels below are folders. Switch the pair to one-way sync, and turn on Archive files before they are changed or deleted by sync and Automatically re-copy files if we detect tampering of copies on the target, which must both be on for a backup.

The guides cover the files in Document Libraries. They do not cover SharePoint lists, site permissions, navigation or site settings. A cloudHQ business plan is required to back up or sync SharePoint. Instructions:

Can my users keep working with their files if Microsoft 365 is down?

If you keep a failover backup in Google Drive, users can open the files already copied there during an outage, as long as their Google access and sharing permissions were set up beforehand. This covers file access only. It does not replace Outlook, Teams or SharePoint features.

A backup copies in one direction, from Microsoft 365 to Google, so changes made to the Google copies are not sent back to Microsoft 365, and a backup pair may replace an edited copy with the version from Microsoft 365. Save important edits somewhere else, or contact support before you rely on this. Each of these users needs a Google Drive account, so you can keep a failover for critical accounts only and back up the rest to Amazon S3, which may cost less. The cost depends on your storage volume, storage class, requests, retrieval, and your existing Google licensing. Details are in IT Admin: Use Case backup MS 365 to Amazon S3 with failover to Google Drive.

I get an error when I authorize cloudHQ in Microsoft 365. What should I do?

A frequent reason is a Microsoft 365 setting that stops users from approving apps themselves. Other causes are an administrator who only allows approved apps, a OneDrive that has never been created for the user, and old browser cookies. Try these steps in order:

  • Ask a Microsoft 365 administrator to approve cloudHQ. The administrator can grant admin consent for the app, or turn on Users can request admin consent to apps they are unable to consent to and approve the request when it arrives. You can keep user consent restricted this way.
  • Check that the user’s OneDrive and mailbox exist.
  • Wait 10 to 15 minutes, clear your browser cookies, and sign in again with the correct account.
  • If it still fails, remove cloudHQ from Enterprise applications (administrator) or from My Apps (user), and authorize again. Removing the app also disconnects any cloudHQ backup that already works for those accounts, so do this only after checking the exact error, and ideally with your administrator or support@cloudhq.net.

The full list of checks is in How to troubleshoot Microsoft 365 authorization errors.

How can I see whether my backup is running?

After setup, cloudHQ shows the status of every backup pair and sends you an email when the first transfer is finished. See How to monitor the status of sync.

I only need to save some Outlook emails, not the whole inbox. Is there a simpler way?

Yes. To save the emails of one Outlook folder, including its subfolders, directly to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or another cloud storage, read How to save Outlook emails in a folder (and sub-folder) directly to cloud storage.

Can I back up a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox?

Yes, that works. Start the backup wizard and pick Microsoft 365 as the platform that holds your users. Then pick the option to back up email. Shared mailboxes show up in the mailbox list too, and they have “(shared mailbox)” next to them. Every entry comes ticked at first, so clear the ticks and leave only the shared mailbox you want. After that, pick a destination for the backup and close out the wizard. The backup keeps running in the background.

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