How to Backup Outlook Emails to OneDrive Account?

  

Rollins Duke   
Published: August 27th, 2025 • 8 Min Read

Having difficulty accessing Outlook emails, attachments, files, and folders without opening the Outlook application? The easiest way to do this is to transfer emails from Outlook to OneDrive and access all the necessary information at times when MS Outlook is not responding. In this blog post, we will walk through the simple steps to backup Outlook emails to OneDrive automatically and manually.

However, this “work from anywhere” reality is forcing organizations to provide data to users in real-time, with the potential to respond to requests and secure sensitive information in Outlook quickly. That being said, the question is: Why would users and organizations use Microsoft OneDrive over anything else?

Microsoft Outlook vs OneDrive

Outlook: The very email client is a personal information manager that enables users to create and deal with address books, emails, tasks, journals, calendars, etc. However, due to issues like corruption, numerous users want to move files from Outlook to OneDrive.

OneDrive: On the other hand, Microsoft made it convenient to manage emails and attachments by launching OneDrive in August 2007. It gives users 5 GB of free storage space and offers a swift way to store all their essential information on the cloud and access it on the go. OneDrive also facilitates the integration of other MS Office services such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs. It gives users the cheapest cloud storage availability there is.

Benefits of Backup Outlook Emails to OneDrive

Apart from a simple GUI and central cloud storage, here are the amazing features to archive Outlook emails to One drive:

• Less Risk Against Data Loss: Archiving emails to OneDrive instead of local storage generally lowers the chances of malware, accidental deletion, ransomware, and hardware failure since it provides users an off-site to keep the information secure if something were to happen.
• Improved Security: Backing up Outlook emails to OneDrive involves features like Personal Vault, which provides an additional shield of protection for crucial and sensitive data with continuous monitoring of suspicious activity.
•  Accessibility: Once the users safely save outlook emails to OneDrive automatically users can access them from any device, like smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
  
• Offline Availability: With the help of the advanced feature of “sync client” on OneDrive, users can easily backup certain folder or emails on their device, enabling them to access those data in offline mode.
• Convenient Sharing: Attributes of OneDrive avail users with features that make it effortless to share emails to other clients, colleagues, or others.
• Optimization of Storage: After users archive Outlook emails to OneDrive, they can easily manage their Outlook space to enhance performance and optimize for space for new messages

Manual Way to Transfer Emails from Outlook to OneDrive

Users can export Outlook email to MSG files manually using the drag and drop technique and store them in a separate folder accordingly. Thereafter, launch the OneDrive file hosting service and upload the resultant MSG files. Users can archive Outlook emails to OneDrive by completing 2 phases:

Phase 1: Export Outlook Messages

1. Launch MS Outlook client and choose a folder.
2. Press the combination “CTRL+A” to select all emails.
   
3. Drag and drop email messages into a folder.
   

Phase 2: Upload Outlook Messages to OneDrive

1. Now, log in to your OneDrive account.
   
2. Select the Upload button to save Outlook emails to OneDrive.
   
3. Browse for Outlook messages and click the Upload button.

Drawbacks of Backing Up Outlook Emails to OneDrive

• Corruption of Files: Regular conflicts and interruptions during the syncing process can result in serious corruption of files, making them inaccessible and unreadable by Outlook leading to permanent loss of the mail history.
• Malware and Ransomware Attacks: The sync service provided by Outlook may be beneficial in some cases but is not considered a true backup. For that matter, if a user’s files on a local drive gets ciphered for ransomware, accidental deletion, or malware attack, OneDrive will simply sync that alteration with itself.
• Inefficient Storage Utilization: Since the data files are considerably large in size, backing up Outlook emails to OneDrive takes up a lot of storage space.
• Syncing Difficulty: Outlook generally locks the files that are open and running, blocking OneDrive to securely sync and access the data files which further leads to errors and obstructing the syncing process to save Outlook email attachments to OneDrive.
• Time Consuming: Backing up Outlook emails to OneDrive manually is considered to be a labor-intensive process that is required to be repeated, making it a time-consuming and a poor selection to archive Outlook emails to OneDrive

Stage 1: Backup Outlook Emails to OneDrive

1. Download and launch Outlook with the OneDrive backup tool.
   
2. Choose one of the options and import the desired Outlook emails with the help of dual options
   
3. Thereafter, select the email folders that you want to upload from Outlook to your OneDrive account.
   
4. Select the required file-saving option from the given list.
   
5. Now, select a location to save and the desired file naming option from the list for the resultant file.
   
6. Tap on the Convert tab to start the backup process of Outlook emails in the chosen format.
   
7. After the process is completed, the tool will display a completion message.
   

Stage 2: Move Folders from Outlook to OneDrive

Now that you have Outlook emails in the desired email or readable format. Follow these three steps to transfer emails from Outlook to OneDrive directly.

1. Sign in to your Microsoft OneDrive account.
   
2. Choose the Upload option from the top panel of the account.
   
3. Select the files that you want to transfer from Outlook to OneDrive.

Key Features to Archive Outlook Emails to OneDrive

• The software gives the facility to save Outlook emails to OneDrive in various standard formats (MSG, EML, MBOX, PDF, DOC).
• Users can easily upload single or multiple Outlook email folders for conversion.
• Users can directly move Outlook email folders to their OneDrive account without any problem.
• This is a quick process to save Outlook attachments to OneDrive.
• It is an independent application, so it does not require MS Outlook installation to transfer emails from Outlook to OneDrive.
• Users can backup Outlook emails to OneDrive from any version of MS Outlook.
• Supports both old ANSI and new Outlook Unicode files without any trouble.
• It offers multiple file naming conventions for better email management.
• Maintains the data integrity of all Outlook files while moving them to OneDrive.

In Conclusion

Backing up Outlook emails to OneDrive is one of the  intelligent method to make sure the users’ sensitive and professional information is kept secure and easily accessible. While traditional techniques are effective for infrequent backups, they become a limitation for dealing with large PST files.

In this blog, we have discussed all the necessary steps to archive Outlook emails to OneDrive. With these manual and automated techniques, users can save backup Outlook emails to OneDrive.