Update 01/12/2026: More details added in the first FAQ.
TL; DR: A new capability called Auto Archiving for Exchange Online will enter public preview from November 15, 2025 (currently under private ...
Updated Jan 12, 2026
Version 7.0
Blog Post
While the introduction of threshold-based Auto-Archiving in Exchange Online is technically sound and may help prevent mailbox overages, the real issue is not the change itself—but the limited time organizations are being given to prepare.
Many companies have already established well-defined archiving policies tailored to their compliance requirements, industry regulations, and internal audit frameworks. These policies are the result of years of strategic planning and governance.
Rolling out a non-optional feature with minimal lead time risks disrupting carefully managed data retention strategies. Organizations need time to assess the impact, align it with existing controls, and ensure that no compliance or operational risks are introduced.
A more collaborative rollout with extended notice and configuration flexibility would better support enterprise readiness.
Agreed that the main issue is that the time we were given was insufficient.
That said, the change itself is also problematic for my org. I'm an admin in one of those orgs that have a well-defined archiving policy, and my team needs the ability to accurately predict when a given item will be moved due to the archive tag that's applied to it. If I create an archive policy tag that says an item gets moved to the archive at 5 years, I expect items that tag is applied to to move to the archive at 5 years. Not 5 years, unless the mailbox needs more space. I find it frustrating that Microsoft believes we want policies to act in a way we did not define them to.
Larger orgs that have well-defined archiving policies also should have infrastructure in place to do things like monitor mailbox sizes and notify users who exceed a certain threshold. The change itself doesn't solve any problem that my org has, and it generates uncertainty about how the policies that we've defined function in production.
If given more time, we could incorporate this into our existing archiving strategies. We could change our warning thresholds to be below 90%, so we could keep users under Microsoft's newly defined threshold that breaks our archiving policies if it's breached. But we'd much rather be able to disable this automatic archiving feature altogether.
Karthik_MSMicrosoft
Jeremy_Pratt , Thank you for your feedback. We want to assure you that we’ve heard this feedback clearly. Our team is working on an updated release plan. This includes providing controls to the admins to better control this feature. We will update this blog with more details in the next few days.
Again, I am asking, please do not just "update this blog with more details". Edits to existing blogs do not send any kind of notification. Please push this as a Message Center post, a Roadmap Item, or create a new Blog Post to notify admins properly.
