Archive emails in Outlook 365 in a few simple steps

Whether it be for freeing up space or for backup purposes, archiving less important emails is a crucial practice for users to maintain a clutter free mailbox. Regularly archiving old emails ensures smooth functionality of Outlook and better mailbox storage management. This blog will go over the detailed procedure to archive Outlook 365 emails and present some notable advantages of exporting your emails to a separate folder.

5 key benefits of archiving emails in Outlook 365

Archiving emails in Outlook 365 offers countless benefits to users, out of which we’ve listed 5 key benefits:

• Empty storage space: Archiving old emails helps users free up essential storage space in their mailbox and while maintaining the mailbox size in the acceptable range.
• Better mailbox organization: Archiving less prioritized emails help in reducing clutter in the mailbox and allows users to easily access the high priority emails.
• Better search ability: Users can easily search for the necessary emails in the archived folder with more accurate search results.
• Data backup: Archiving your emails in a separate folder creates a backup of your mail communications which is useful in case of accidental deletion, virus/malware attacks, system or software failure etc.
• Legal compliances: Several organizations have retention policies that require users to save emails for future legal purposes.

Prerequisites to backup Outlook 365 emails

Before attempting to archive emails in Outlook 365, it is extremely necessary for users to enable the Archive feature for their Office 365 account. There are two ways to enable the Archive feature in your Office 365 account, via the Exchange admin center and via PowerShell. Let's learn about these methods in detail.

Method 1: Via the Exchange admin center

To execute this method smoothly, verify that the concerned Office 365 account has all the required permissions granted to successfully enable the Archive feature in the Exchange admin center. Let’s look at the detailed procedure to so:

• Sign into your Office 365 account with the correct credentials and navigate to the

Exchange admin center.

• Now navigate to Recipients in the left panel and click on Mailboxes.
• Tick the mailbox that you want to take a backup of and in the newly opened dialogue box, navigate to the Others tab.
• Click on Manage mailbox archive under the Mailbox archive section.
• Click on the Mailbox archive status toggle to enable the archive feature for your Office 365 account and click on Save.
• Refresh the page once and check if the feature is enabled or not.

Method 2: Via PowerShell

PowerShell is a combination of a command-line shell and a scripting language that allows users to automate and manage administrative tasks related to their respective Windows, Linux, or macOS systems. We’ve described the steps to enable archiving in Office 365 through PowerShell below:

• Launch the PowerShell commandlet on your system and type in the command given below to connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

Connect-ExchangeOnline

• After the command is successfully processed, enter your Office 365 credentials to connect to your account.
• To enable archiving for all the Office 365 accounts, type in the following command.

Get-Mailbox -Filter {ArchiveGuid -Eq "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" -AND RecipientTypeDetails -Eq "UserMailbox"} | Enable-Mailbox -Archive

• Likewise, to enable archiving for specific Office 365 accounts, run the following command in the commandlet.

Enable-Mailbox -Identity -Archive

What is the process to archive Outlook 365 emails?

After successfully enabling the Archive feature of Office 365 accounts, now we can move ahead with the process of archiving the selected emails and exporting them from inbox to a separate folder. Below we’ve described two ways of archiving emails in Outlook 365. Users can either archive specific emails or mailbox folder manually or auto archive Outlook 365 emails with the automated feature provided by Outlook.

Approach 1: Manually archive Outlook 365 emails

The steps to manually backup Outlook 365 emails are described in detail below:

• Launch Outlook and navigate to the File tab.
• Navigate to Tools and click on Clean Up Old Items from the given list.
• In the Archive window, select the Archive this folder and all subfolders option and choose the folder you want to archive. Apply the necessary filters such as the date filter and the given checkbox.
• Browse where you wish to save the Outlook 35 mail backup and finally click OK.

Approach 2: Auto archive Outlook 365 with the AutoArchive feature

Microsoft Outlook offers a one-of-a-kind feature called AutoArchive to facilitate the archiving process in Outlook. This in-built tool automatically manages and moves older emails, attachments, contacts, tasks, and other Outlook data to a separate folder in regular intervals to maintain a clutter-free inbox. Follow the steps below to enable the AutoArchive feature in Outlook:

• Navigate to the File tab in the Outlook application and from the left panel, click on Options.
• In the Outlook Options window, navigate to the Advanced tab and click on AutoArchive Settings.
• In the AutoArchive wizard, set the duration of how frequently you want this process to repeat and apply other necessary filters by ticking all the required checkboxes.
• Then browse the location where you wish to export emails from Outlook 365 and click OK.
• Your emails will automatically get archived as per applied archive settings.

What’s the easiest approach to take an Outlook 365 mail backup?

Users can easily archive emails in Outlook 365 by following the techniques mentioned above accurately. But performing these processes repeatedly may not be feasible for users with large-sized mailboxes. Additionally, continuously archiving the emails into a single PST file can inadvertently make it oversized which may lead to PST file corruption. The best way to avoid the uncertainties that come with these manual methods is to use a professional Microsoft 365 Backup Tool to take a backup of your entire mailbox without worrying about data loss.

Recoveryfix Microsoft 365 Backup Tool backs up your entire Exchange Online data including, Primary mailboxes, Archive mailboxes, and Public Folders to the location of your choice while maintaining the data integrity. Users can also locate and backup specific emails or folders of their Outlook 365 mailbox account with the search feature of this remarkable software.

Conclusion

The process of archiving emails is crucial for business organizations and individuals alike, considering it not only frees up space in the mailbox, but you also have a backup for the future. Users can archive Outlook 365 emails by following the methods described above. Although before attempting any method, make sure that the mailbox has permission to archive emails in Outlook 365. For a faster and risk-free backup process, use Recoveryfix Microsoft 365 Backup Tool to back up your Exchange Online mailbox completely.