Online Archive

Owned by Michael Tierney
Last updated: Oct 04, 2024
5 min read

Exchange online archiving offers a place to store older mail that you wish to keep. An archive mailbox is a specialized mailbox that appears alongside primary mailbox folders in Outlook or Outlook on the web. Users can access the archive in the same way that they access their primary mailboxes. In addition, users can search both their archives and primary mailboxes.

The online archive does not count towards the mailbox storage limits. Additionally, archived email does not count towards UA’s total pooled Microsoft storage. Unlike PST files, data in the online archive mailbox is stored in the Office 365 cloud account and not on the personal computer. This will result in your archived data being available online through your Office 365 account even if your computer stops working. Learn more about archiving mail on Microsoft’s website. Microsoft and OIT do not recommend using PST files for archive storage.

Note: the Online Archive / In-Place Archive is not the same feature as the standard Outlook “Archive” folder. The standard Outlook Archive is simply a location to store old messages outside of the inbox and has no affect on storage thresholds. Please do not use the standard Outlook Archive folder; use the Online Archive instead.

To access your Online Archive:

  1. In the left-hand pane beneath the “Inbox” section, find the expandable group called “Online Archive <your user name>.”

  2. Expand the in-place archive to browse archived messages. Messages will be sorted in the same folder structure they were located in when filed in your main mailbox.

  3. Searching using the main search window at the top of the screen defaults to “Current Mailbox” as the search scope. Changing the scope on the Search tab of the ribbon or in the search drop-down by the search field to “All mailboxes” will search both your main mailbox and your online archive.

  1. Visit Outlook Online

  2. In the left-hand pane beneath the “Inbox” section, find the expandable group called “In-Place Archive <your display name>.”

  3. Expand the in-place archive to browse archived messages. Messages will be sorted in the same folder structure they were located in when filed in your main mailbox.

  4. Searching using the main search window at the top of the screen will search both your main mailbox and your online archive.

  1. In the left-hand pane beneath the “Inbox” folders, find the expandable broup called “Online Archive.”

  2. Expand the online archive section to browse archived messages. Messages will be sorted in the same folder structure they were located in when filed in your main mailbox.

  3. Searching using the main search window at the top of the screen will search both your main mailbox and your online archive.

Online archiving is an automated process that runs periodically on the email server itself. The “Managed Folder Assistant” process spends a certain amount of time per day per mailbox moving data from live mailboxes to archive mailboxes; therefore, email may not move on the exact specified date depending on the process workload.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Question 1: Why is OIT enabling Online Archiving?

Answer 1: Microsoft has made significant changes to its storage allocation processes, starting in August 2024. It's important to note that prior to the implementation of archiving, the University's email usage alone accounted for a substantial 58% of the total pooled storage provided by Microsoft under their new storage limits. This pooled storage is not only utilized for emails but also for OneDrive, Sharepoint, and Teams storage. Therefore, the introduction of archiving is crucial to effectively manage the overall email storage allocation.

Question 2: What accounts will have the archive policy applied to them?

Answer 2: All Faculty, Staff, Student, Alumni, and Affiliate accounts will be subject to the two-year archiving policy.

Question 3: I have a complex folder structure in my mailbox. Will all my sorted mail be archived to an unsorted location?

Answer 3: No, the archive agent will automatically create folders within your Online Archive to mirror the structure of your main mailbox. For example, in the screenshot below, the Online Archive Vendors folder has the same subfolders of the main mailbox, with the exception of the “Atlassian” folder. No mail messages in the main mailbox Atlassian folder are over two years old, so the archive agent has not yet needed to create the Atlassian folder within the Online Archive.

Side-by-side comparison of the Main Mailbox and Online Archive showing the mirrored folder structure in the Vendors folder of this mailbox

Question 4: Can I still search all my mail in one place?

Answer 4: This answer varies slightly based on the version of Outlook you are using. In “New” Outlook for Mac, “New” Outlook for Windows, and Outlook for the Web (https://outlook.office.com), the current default is to search both the main mailbox and the Online Archive automatically. In the legacy Outlook, the default search operation is “Current Mailbox” which does not search the Online Archive. You can set your search drop-down to “All Mailboxes” to include both the Online Archive and main mailbox in the same search operation.

screenshot showing the search options in the drop-down, with all mailboxes selected

In the legacy Outlook for Windows program, you can also change your default search location to “All Mailboxes” by clicking on File, Options, and then selecting the Search section and changing the default from “Current folder” to “All mailboxes” as shown below. The easiest way to change this option in legacy Outlook for Mac is to click on the Outlook menu, select settings, and then enter “All mailboxes” in the search window in the top right.

 

Question 5: Who should I contact if I have additional questions?

Answer 5: Please contact the IT Service Desk at itservicedesk@ua.edu if you have additional questions.