Office 365 SharePoint Backup Tutorial

Office 365 SharePoint is a popular business solution that allows seamless collaboration, storage, and management of essential documents. While more companies have started to trust this platform for their storage needs, absolute data protection still remains a question.

Several instances, like accidental deletion, drive failure, or ransomware attacks, can leave you with nowhere to go. The prolonged downtime can adversely affect your business operations. To avoid these mishaps, you must take proper measures to back up your SharePoint data.

In this comprehensive tutorial, we will discuss 3 significant ways to back up Office 365 SharePoint. So let’s get started!

Central Administration

The first method is to use Central Administration on your Office 365 account as a backup method for SharePoint site collection. However, before starting, you must verify a few things, like whether the account performing backup has accessibility to the administrator group. And whether Windows SharePoint Services Timer V4 has complete authority over the backup folder.

Now you can start the process by following these steps.

Launch Central Administration.
Visit the homepage and navigate to the Backup and Restore section.
Click on Perform a Site Backup Collection to proceed.
A new page will open where you can choose the collection you want to back up.
In the file name section, you need to enter the site collection's local path where you want to save its off-site copy.
Select Start Back Up.

To check the status of the files backed up through this method, visit the Granular Backup Job Status Page. You can find it in the Readiness section. Here, the status of your current backups will appear on the page's lower-half. This page reloads every 30 seconds, but you can also do so manually if you want to keep an updated track of things.

PowerShell

This method might be a bit difficult for users who know little about coding and command. However, it is one of the most effective ways to back up SharePoint data and site collections.

Here are the steps you need to follow.

Make sure you are using the latest PowerShell PnP version, or else the system will display an error when you try to run it. Besides this, it is also crucial for you to be an Office 365 global administrator to proceed.
In the next step, you must establish a connection between your computer and the site where your files are stored. It is possible only by running a command which is as follows: https://demoppm4.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet. Here demoppm4 is the name of your Office 365 account, while site/intranet refers to the specific location where the files you want to backup are stored.
Once you run the command, the system will ask you to enter your username and password to proceed.
Now you must utilize the Get-PnP command to back up the SharePoint Office 365 data to a local drive on your computer. There are some important requirements for this step. For example, you must specify the file URL you want to copy from SharePoint. You also need to set the location where you want to save the file on your computer. For instance, it could be the C:\Backup folder you created, especially for this purpose.

Use Third-Party Software

Both the methods mentioned above are manual, which means there are higher chances of mistakes. And they can be time-consuming as well. However, the good news is that third-party software can automate this process.

While several such software are directed towards backing up SharePoint Online files, many of them feature the same capabilities for public and private site collections. Some include UpSafe Office 365 Cloud Backup, Metalogix Selective Restore Manager, and AvePoint Backup. Irrespective of your chosen provider, the steps to use it as a backup source would remain almost similar.

Here’s how to back up Office 365 SharePoint via third-party software.
Connect the backup software to your Office 365 account by entering your credentials.
Select the SharePoint site collection you want to backup and specify its type (full or incremental).
Now choose the destination path for the backup files. It can be a local computer, external hard drive, or cloud storage.
Start the backup and wait for its completion. Now verify that all the necessary files have been backed up successfully.
You can navigate to Settings to schedule automatic backups to ensure your SharePoint site is backed up regularly.

Wrapping Up

SharePoint is undoubtedly a top-notch Microsoft product for storing data and collaborating on different projects. However, like any online server, it can crash too. Hence, you should have an off-site copy of data to recover it instantly and avoid prolonged downtimes that could affect your business operations.
We hope by following our easy Office 365 SharePoint backup tutorial, you can ensure an all-time availability of your data, even if the on-premises setup fails for any reason.