This release brings enhancements that strengthen our Microsoft 365 offering within N-able Cove Data Protection (Cove). These updates deliver:
- Compliance and legal use cases with PST Export entering public preview
- Improved searchability of In-Place Archive backups in the restore wizard
- Improved SharePoint Backup speeds by optimizing how we handle unique permissions during backups
Together, they deliver more robust data protection and continue our focus on making Cove a more efficient and simpler solution for your business.
Legal Disclaimer: Any usage of the product while in Limited Tech Preview or Public Preview is provided as part of early access. Features may change before general availability, and performance or availability is not guaranteed.
Billing Disclaimer: PST Export is Included in your standard Cove Microsoft 365 Backup licensing. No additional charges apply.
What’s New in the Cove?
Microsoft 365 Protection
PST Export Enters Public Preview
PST Export for Exchange Online backups is now available in public preview, with a gradual rollout occurring across production environments over the next 1–2 months.
This new capability allows you to export mailbox data from Cove in .pst format, enabling several use cases such as:
- User offboarding and long-term archiving
- Compliance and legal workflows
- Data migration and offline access
- Basic disaster recovery (when Microsoft 365 is unavailable)
Access & Security Model
- PST Export follows the same Security Officer (SO) role model used for other sensitive restore actions in Cove.
- No Microsoft 365 Global Admin credentials are required, enabling exports even when the Microsoft 365 tenant is not accessible.
- Only Super Users and Managers with the SO flag can perform export or download actions.
- All export operations are fully logged for transparency and auditability.
Once you’ve tested PST Export, share your feedback with us through the ‘Features lab’ or by emailing Yuliya.Shaternik@n-able.com.
Improved Searchability for In-Place Archive Backups
We’ve extended support for email encodings for In-Place Archive backups from a few common encodings to 200+, meaning many more archived emails will now be searchable in the restore wizard.
Cove will automatically re-process affected archived messages where needed. No action is required from users.
Optimized SharePoint Permissions Handling
We’ve optimized how Cove handles SharePoint permissions during backups by requesting detailed permissions only for items with unique permissions. This should result in faster backups, especially for sites where most items inherit permissions and only a smaller portion have unique permissions.
Continuity
One-Time Restore to ESXi Enhancements
You can now specify the target VM name when performing a One-Time Restore to ESXi, including the option to restore into an existing VM. This capability for One-Time Restore to ESXi follows the same addition that we made to One-Time Restore to Hyper-V.
Previously, the system generated the VM name automatically and you could not restore into an existing VM to preserve its configuration. This update makes One-Time Restore more flexible and can reduce time spent on post-restore adjustments.
Resources and Events
Become a Master of Disaster Recovery (February 12th)
Join this free, interactive Masterclass on February 12th, 2026 that prepares you and your team to respond before a disaster strikes. Register here.
More Educational Content
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