How to Archive Mails in Office 365?

Read time 11 minutes

It is safe to say that a neatly arranged mailbox sets the tone for the rest of the day. However, its maintenance is a game changer since all the emails need to be placed on a priority basis. But as your inbox starts to fill up, it can become difficult to find important messages at the right time. As a result of a clustered inbox, you can miss an essential timeline, leading to confusion and loss. One efficient manner to declutter your Inbox is to archive all the old messages. Office 365 mailbox includes an Archive folder that you can use to store older email messages which are no longer in use. Once you archive an email, it gets transferred to this folder. To be on the safer side, you still have access to all the messages, and they do not count in your storage quota.

Here, we will discuss how to archive mails in Office 365

Mail archiving is the process of moving old or unused email messages from the primary Inbox to a separate storage location, usually a different folder. You can also easily retrieve any of the archived emails. This can help organizations to free up space in their mailbox while preserving all the important emails.

Besides making the right email available at the right time, email archiving has many advantages. Many users are unaware of the various benefits that email archiving has to offer-

• It ensures a clear separation of all emails in the main mailbox.
• These archived mails can be easily accessed from any device and location using Outlook 2013 and higher versions.
• The search option enables users to find the right message at the right moment.
• The archived emails are protected with the same level of security as that of the main mailbox.
• The email server performs better since the load on it gets reduced.
• The storage space is unlimited.
• Any email can be archived easily, either manually or automatically.
• The storage limit for the primary and archive mailbox is separate.
• A clear and organized Inbox.
• It avoids confusion of any kind resulting from a massive cluster of emails.
• Enhanced productivity since no time is wasted in finding emails.

First, check for the Archive page in the Exchange admin center for all the sufficient permissions to enable archiving. Before starting the procedure, Exchange administrators can assign the Mail Recipients role to the account (by default, this is given to Organization Management and Recipient Management role). Once this permission is given, the Archive page will appear in the Exchange admin center, and then you can follow these steps-

1. Visit https://protection.office.com/ and sign in with your Office 365 credentials.
2. In the “Security and Compliance Center,” select “Data governance,” and then click “Archive.”
3. The “Archive” page will be displayed on the screen. You will see all the mailboxes that are connected to your Office 365 account. Also, the archive mailbox column will show whether an archive mailbox has been enabled or not.
4. Now, select the mailbox for which you want to enable “Archive mailbox.” Click Enable.
5. A warning will be displayed on your screen as shown below. Click “Yes” to enable the archive mailbox.

It will take a few seconds to create the “Archive mailbox.” Once it is created, the user will be able to see the archive mailbox.

You can also enable the archive mailbox using Microsoft PowerShell. However, that method might get complex for all novice users. That’s why the Compliance Center method is always recommended.

If the archive mailbox is enabled, Outlook or Outlook on the Web users can archive emails by following these steps:

1. Log in to Outlook using an Office 365 account. Now, open the folder from where you want to archive emails.Note: You can also perform this action by selecting the specific emails and then clicking the “Archive” icon on the top pane of the Office 365 account.
2. Select the specific emails and right-click on them. A wizard will appear on the screen. Hit the “Archive” button to move these emails to the archive mailbox.

If you have configured an Office 365 account in Outlook, you can use the archive feature of Outlook to archive old emails. However, please remember that emails are archived locally in the Archive folder of Outlook.

1. Open Outlook on your desktop and select emails from your inbox or any other folder.
2. Now, right-click on those selected emails, and click “Archive” to move emails to the archive mailbox.

Note: You can also perform this action by selecting emails and clicking “Archive” in the ‘Delete’ group (of the ribbon). You can also use the “backspace” button on the keyboard to directly archive the selected emails.

1. To move a whole folder to archive, then go to the “File” tab and select “Tools.” Now from the drop-down menu, select “Clean up old items.”
2. A window will appear on the screen with all the folders of Outlook. Select the specific folder that you want to move to archive. In this section, you can select the date from which you want to archive the emails. Also, you can include emails that have enabled “Do not Auto Archive.” Select the location on your system where you want to save this archive file and click “OK.”

The archiving process in Outlook 2013 and 2010 is similar. To archive emails in Outlook 2010 and 2013, follow these steps:

1. Open Outlook and go to the “File” tab.
2. Now, choose “Cleanup Tools” and select “Archive” from the drop-down menu.
3. A pop-up window will appear on the screen with all the folders of Outlook, select the specific folder that you want to move to the archive mailbox.
4. Select the date from which you want to archive the emails. Also, you can include emails that have enabled “Do not Auto Archive.” Select the location on your system where you want to save this archive file and click “OK.”This archive will be saved to the chosen location.

If you need a direct, convenient, and more flexible solution to archive emails in Office 365, then you should consider a professional tool like Kernel Office 365 Email Archiving. It is a smartly designed tool that readily supports archiving selected or all Office 365 data to a secure file format. It is well capable of archiving data from Office 365 mailboxes, groups, public folders, shared mailboxes, and archive mailboxes and saving it into any of these formats- PST, EML, DOC, DOCX, HTML, HMT, PDF, and MSG. With the availability of certain intelligent filters, you can perform archiving of selective data too. To understand the actual working of the tool, users can download and install the free version of the tool from its official website.

To archive Office 365 emails, follow the steps below:

1. Launch the Kernel Office 365 Email Archiving tool. On the Welcome Screen, click the “Add” option to add the Office 365 account to the tool.
2. Choose Use Basic Authentication and click Ok.
3. Next, enter the Office 365 account login credential details like user name and password. You can either select the Single mailbox or Multiple mailbox option based on your choice. Then, click the “Add” option to add it.
4. The Office 365 account gets added. Click “Set Filter and Migrate” to progress.
5. Now, choose the Migration type as Mailbox, Archive Mailbox, or Public Folder from the source Office 365 account and click “Migrate.”
6. On the “Filter Selection” page, select the desired folders, apply filters – date filter, item type filter, and other options as per the need. Click “I am OK, Start Migration” to start the migration.
7. Choose the archiving file format as PST (or any other) from the provided options and click “OK.”
8. Next, provide the destination for the archived Office 365 mails and click “OK”.
9. The archiving process will start and be complete in no time.
10. Check the specified destination for the archived email data.

With this utility, you can archive emails in Office 365 with minimal time, complete flexibility, and various options for output formats.

Conclusion

As your business grows, the volume of emails you send and receive increases rapidly. This can become a roadblock in maintaining a clean Inbox. That is when archiving your email mailboxes comes into the picture. Luckily, multiple ways to archive your emails in Office 365 have been outlined in detail above. In addition, a secure and easy professional approach is also discussed above to get the archiving job done quickly.