Microsoft offers Archive feature with their Office 365 subscription plan to allow users to get additional space of 50GB. It can be increased to 1TB if you assign an additional Exchange Online plan 2 license to the user. When you enable the archive, it creates an additional folder in your mailbox that you can use to store your old emails and more. In this blog post, we will learn about archive mailbox and how to enable archive mailbox or In-place archive in Office 365.
What is Office 365 Archive Mailbox?
Archive mailbox in Office 365 is like a secondary mailbox for the user. It allows users to store their old and unwanted emails without occupying primary mailbox space. The benefit is that users can access their emails anytime. Archive mailbox is by default disabled in Microsoft 365 for all users. One should enable archive mailbox if they require it. Archive mailbox can be seen in Outlook application, web portal and mobile application also.
Benefits of Enabling Archive Mailbox in Office 365
Archive mailbox offers multiple space related benefits. Also, if you want to create and apply retention policies then it should be enabled. Let’s look at some benefits below.
Increased Space: It provides additional storage space so that you can keep your main mailbox organized and move less wanted emails to archive mailbox.
Data Retention: Archive mailbox is necessary in case of data retention policies. Suppose if you want to create and apply MRM retention policy for moving old emails to archive, then this policy only work if you have archive enabled.
Better Performance: Less space in the primary mailbox can make it slow. So, after enabling archive mailbox, you can move your old emails to it and can save space in your primary mailbox.
Methods to Enable Archive Mailbox in Office 365
Here we will discuss multiple ways to enable archive mailbox. Below are two methods mentioned:
- Through Exchange Admin Center
- Using Windows PowerShell
Enable Office 365 Archive Mailbox through Exchange Admin Center
Through Exchange Admin, you can enable archive mailbox one by one for users. For bulk enabling archive mailbox, we can use Windows PowerShell method. Please follow the instructions mentioned below.
- Visit Exchange Admin Center and login with your credentials.
- Now click on recipient, then mailboxes. All your mailboxes list will be open. Here choose your mailbox and then click on the others tab and then Manage Mailbox Archive as shown below.
- Toggle the button to enabled and click on the Save. (Name is optional)
- Now you have successfully enabled mailbox archiving.
Enable Archive Mailbox in Office 365 via Windows PowerShell
With Windows PowerShell, we can archive single mailbox and bulk mailboxes (multiple or all). First of all you will need to connect to Exchange Online via PowerShell. After that you can use the below commands according to your needs like enabling single or multiple or all mailboxes.
For Single Mailbox
Type and run the below command after connecting to Exchange Online in PowerShell.
Enable-Mailbox -Identity <user mailbox> -Archive
For All Mailboxes
Use the below command to enable archives for all mailboxes.
Get-Mailbox -Filter {ArchiveStatus -Eq "None" -AND RecipientTypeDetails -Eq "UserMailbox"} | Enable-Mailbox -Archive
For Selected Mailboxes
First, create a csv file with the header as “Email“. You can check out the below image for reference. Once CSV file is created, provide the file path in the command and then run the same.
$users=Import-CSV <filepath>
foreach($user in $users){Enable-Mailbox –Identity $user.Email -Archive}
If you want to enable archive in Shared Mailboxes, then you will need to assign licenses to them. After that you can run the below command in the Windows PowerShell.
Get-Mailbox -Filter {ArchiveStatus -Eq "None" -AND RecipientTypeDetails -Eq "SharedMailbox"} | Enable-Mailbox -Archive
Using the above-mentioned ways, you can successfully enable mailbox archiving in Microsoft Office 365.
Conclusion:
This blog explains about Office 365 mailbox archiving and its benefits. Also, it discusses multiple ways to enable archive mailbox in Office 365. You can use any of the above methods that you find easy to use. Whether you want to enable archive for space issue or to use retention policy, these methods works perfectly and easy to perform. So do not wait, enable archive mailbox and keep your primary mailbox organized. I hope this blog has provided you with valuable information.
