Migrating from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 is not just about copying files. If done wrong, you can lose emails, break permissions, and end up with chaos in SharePoint. In this post, we break down a step-by-step process that lets you move 50 or 500 users with zero data loss and no downtime.
The first step is auditing your current environment. We always start by looking at where your data lives: emails in Gmail, files in Google Drive, calendars and contacts. Many companies don’t even know how many inactive accounts or shared drives they have that nobody has touched for years. That’s garbage you don’t want to bring into your new cloud tenant.
The second step is choosing the right migration tool. We use official Microsoft tools like Exchange Online Migration Batch for emails and Microsoft Migration Manager for drives. They run in the background, perform multiple passes to sync changes, and let you run a test migration on a small group of users. This is critical — you see how everything will work before you hit the final cutover button.
The third step is the cutover. We typically do this on a Friday evening or over the weekend. On Friday evening, we run the final sync — moving every email that arrived in the last 24 hours. On Saturday morning, you change your MX records in DNS so email starts flowing to Exchange Online. By Monday morning, users open Outlook or Teams and see everything in place. No lost emails. Synced calendars. Unbroken file links.
But the most important step is the fourth one — training. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 work differently. Users used to Gmail and Google Drive can feel lost in Outlook and OneDrive. That’s why we always run short company-wide training sessions: how shared channels work in Teams, where to find shared drives (spoiler: it’s SharePoint), and how not to lose files by dragging them into the wrong folder.
If you’re planning a migration from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, don’t start by looking for the cheapest vendor. Start with an audit. Understand what you have, where it’s going, and who owns what. And if you need help — we do these projects end-to-end in one to two weeks depending on your company size.