Office 365 email archiving is a concept stuck between generations of technology. After years of backing up archives in PST files, there is a question of how does this work with the cloud and Exchange Online?
Archiving is an often overlooked feature of email services but there are many scenarios where it is useful. Users can better organize mailboxes and free up much-needed storage space; businesses are able to preserve records of email communications and ensure data security and compliance needs.
Microsoft offers its own archiving service for Exchange Online and there are endless third party add-ins. While the Microsoft solution is very simple and easy to use, its simplicity comes at a cost. The archiving features do not offer much flexibility in implementation and some features are restricted to upper-level subscriptions with the latest release edition of Outlook.
Here is our brief guide to archiving in Exchange Online (a feature of Office 365), when to consider it and why archiving has changed in the cloud era.
The Sentrian guide to Outlook archiving:
Email archiving within Microsoft Office 365 is established by an In-Place Archive. The archive appears similar to a normal mailbox, which includes the inbox, outbox, drafts, etc. It essentially displays like another set of folders in Outlook. From a user and administrator perspective, this is the preferred archiving method. It removes the legacy PST format, which involved storing email data on a user's PC or on a server, that lacked flexibility compared to an In-Place Archive.
Standard Mailbox (above) with Archive (below) in Outlook Web App (OWA)
While the In-Place Archive appears similar to adding on a second mailbox, its features are significantly limited. Particularly, the archive mailbox cannot be accessed from mobile devices (Exchange ActiveSync does not support archive mailboxes). Additionally, email in the In-Place Archive can still be interacted with (e.g. replies & forwarding), however, difficulties can arise if attempting to move emails back into the main mailbox. For this reason, once emails are in the In-Place Archive, they should be treated as if they cannot be removed.
Users can archive emails via two primary methods with the In-Place Archive:
Manually adding emails to the archive (dragging and dropping, or right-click and moving).
A retention policy that automatically archives emails after a period of time (default is two years; set by administrator).
2017-08-23_12-55-18.gifManually archiving an email in Outlook 2016
Unfortunately, users cannot set inbox rules of their own to automatically archive email. They must manually add emails to the archive. A sort-of workaround is to create a 'dummy' archive folder in their main mailbox. Emails can stay in that folder until they are archived using the two-year retention policy.
Finally, the In-Place Archive is switched off by default, even for accounts entitled to the feature. Administrators must manually enable the archive for every mailbox that will be using it.
In-Place Hold & Litigation Hold
Microsoft has two other methods of retaining email, In-Place Hold, and Litigation Hold. Strictly speaking, these holds are not archives. But from a business perspective, they are effective methods of preserving email. The two holds are managed by administrators to ensure mailboxes are accurately stored when necessary. They are not user-controlled archives.
The In-Place Hold is a rules-based hold that targets certain types of email using retention policies. A Litigation Hold archives all emails. Both holds will prevent emails from being deleted from a user's main mailbox and archive mailbox. The emails will also be preserved as they were received, preventing a user from altering them. These holds are obviously useful for compliance purposes.
The availability of these types of holds depends on the Office or Exchange subscription and/or product purchased. Further technical details on these types of holds can be found here.
Archive storage capacity
A common question about Microsoft's archiving feature is: how large is the storage capacity?
Earlier this year Microsoft boosted the capacity for some Office 365 plans to unlimited. It works by first allocating the office 365 archive mailbox 100GB of storage. Once it is filled, more capacity is added in blocks or allocations. Microsoft has not stated how large these further allocations are or if there is an eventual storage limit to them.
Office 365 archiving capacity
A key point to note however is that Office 365 Business plans (not Enterprise) do not have an unlimited archive. They currently have an archive storage limit of 50GB (on top of the 50GB for their inbox mailbox). Further details on the storage limits for specific Office 365 and standalone Exchange subscriptions are available here.
Access to Outlook archiving
Email archiving in Outlook is not included in all Office subscriptions or product purchases. Furthermore, even if a subscription entitles the business to all archiving features, it may be the case that only the latest version of Outlook 2016 for Windows or Outlook on the web can access them.
Generally, Office 365 Enterprise plans include full archiving feature sets with higher capacity storage. Meanwhile, the Business level plans include only In-Place Archiving (not the two types of holds). Retail editions of Outlook 2016 and 2013 also include the In-Place Archive. See here for a more detailed list, or contact us.