Moving Emails from Local Mailboxes in Apple Mail to M365

By Evan Campbell
Published on April 12, 2021 9:55 am MT
Updated on August 19, 2026 10:22 am MT
Posted in Apple, E-mail, General CNSIT

If you save emails to local mailboxes on your computer and need to free up some space on your hard drive you can move the emails back to the M365 server as a safe storage space that is also accessible on any device which has your Colorado State email account synced. These instructions will guide you through setting up subfolders on your M365 inbox and moving emails from local mailboxes to those subfolders.

  • Open Apple Mail and locate the local mailboxes you’re wanting to move to M365
  • Navigate to https://outlook.cloud.microsoft in your preferred browser and login with your NetID@colostate.edu and NetID password
  • Once the Outlook application is open you will see your M365 inbox
  • Right click on Inbox and then click on “Create new subfolder” this will create a folder where you can place emails saved to local mailboxes in Apple Mail back onto M365 to free up space on your computer
  • Name the newly created folder after one of the local mailboxes in Apple Mail
  • Go back to Apple Mail and you should see the newly created subfolder reflected there under the Inbox
  • Once you confirm that the subfolder is also reflected in Apple Mail select the local mailbox in Apple Mail you’re wanting to move
  • Once the mailbox is selected and the emails are displayed scroll back up to the newly created subfolder in Apple Mail and click and drag the emails to that subfolder
  • Once the emails have moved to the subfolder navigate back to Outlook in https://outlook.cloud.microsoft and you should see the emails in the subfolder there as well which means they’re off your computer and backed up to the M365 servers
  • If your local mailboxes have mailboxes within mailboxes you can create subfolders within subfolder to maintain the original structure of the local mailboxes in M365

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