As content growth accelerates worldwide, organizations need better ways to manage inactive data without sacrificing security, compliance, retention, or discoverability.
Today, we’re announcing a public preview of file‑level archiving in Microsoft 365 Archive. This new capability enables you to archive individual files moving them into a lower-cost, cold-storage tier in SharePoint. This means you can archive outdated and redundant files while keeping the rest of the site active, improving both your Copilot relevancy and your search results in the process.
Read on to learn more about how it works and how to get started. You can also join our webinar on April 7, 10:00am PDT, to see file-level archive in action and engage with our product team.
SharePoint folder with a mix of archived and active filesGet granular control for inactive content
Until now, Microsoft 365 Archive supported site‑level archiving, meaning admins had to choose whether to archive an entire site, often without knowing the details of the work happening there. With file‑level archiving, it’s now possible to archive individual documents within active SharePoint sites. This is ideal for older project files, completed events, or reference materials that must be retained but are rarely accessed.
Animation showing the file-level archiving experience in SharePoint.Improve Copilot and Search performance
Microsoft 365 Archive helps improve Copilot results by removing archived files and sites from Copilot’s active index. By reducing clutter across SharePoint and search experiences, you enable Copilot to surface higher‑value, current information while still maintaining governance and compliance. Admins can also enable users to identify and archive the content they are familiar with, instead of admins having to make judgement calls about the relevancy of entire sites.
Reduce overall storage costs
Archiving also helps reduce active SharePoint storage consumption. This can help you save up to 75% compared to adding additional SharePoint storage – freeing up your SharePoint storage for active collaboration. As a reminder, archived storage is only charged when your tenant has exceeded its storage quota. There are no reactivation fees for SharePoint sites and content stored in Microsoft 365 Archive.
Keep security, compliance, and metadata intact
File‑level archiving helps organizations take a more intentional approach to data lifecycle management and responsible data growth – separating active collaboration content from long‑term records. Meanwhile, it retains the security settings, compliance protections, and metadata of the archived content. Importantly, archived content remains searchable by administrators using Microsoft Purview and admin search and all Purview flows remain intact. This approach keeps inactive data protected inside the Microsoft 365 trust boundary – without cluttering active workspaces or inflating primary storage usage.
Matrix comparing the SharePoint standard storage tier to the Microsoft 365 Archive tierBuilt for extensibility with APIs
Microsoft 365 Archive includes support for Microsoft Graph APIs, enabling organizations and partners to integrate site- and file‑level archiving into custom workflows and lifecycle management solutions.
For public preview, file‑level archiving focuses on manual and API‑based experiences. Looking ahead, we know that the best way to manage archive files at scale is through policies. We’re working hard to make policy‑based automation for archiving files available soon.
We have partners, including Preservica, using these APIs to incorporate Microsoft 365 Archive into their own solutions. These integrations can offer you more ways to manage your organization’s long-term SharePoint content.
“We are delighted to be part of the public preview for file-level archiving for Microsoft 365 Archive. This enables us to build on our Preserve365® integration with Microsoft 365 Archive for site-level archiving as we work together to make Active Digital Preservation a seamless part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.”
– Stuart Reed, Chief Product Officer, Preservica
Customer spotlight: Kantar
Kantar, a global leader in marketing data and analytics, is embracing Gen AI to save time, improve quality, and deliver better results to both employees and customers. After moving content to Microsoft 365 and rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot, Kantar faced increasing storage costs. By adopting Microsoft 365 Archive, Kantar reports they have successfully reduced storage costs and improved data quality. Kantar also helped ensure Copilot could access clean, relevant information while keeping inactive data secure and cost-effective.
“Microsoft 365 Archive helps us not only address storage costs, but also provide our end users the most up-to-date, relevant content across SharePoint, Teams, Copilot and Gen AI agents.”
- Davide Ranchetti, Principal Engineering Manager, Digital Workspace
To date, Kantar reports that they have archived more than 40,000 sites – nearly 100 terabytes of data – significantly cleaning their data estate and reducing SharePoint storage costs. They’re looking forward to using file-level archiving to save even more on storage costs by archiving large, inactive video files.
Learn more about how Kantar is reducing storage costs with Microsoft 365 Archive.
Get started with Microsoft 365 Archive
File‑level archiving in Microsoft 365 Archive is now available in public preview for eligible Microsoft 365 tenants. Learn more about setting up Microsoft 365 Archive, and how to enable and manage file-level and site-level archiving.
Register today for our webinar on April 7, 10:00am PDT to learn more about Microsoft 365 Archive and ask our product team questions about file-level archiving.
If you’re a developer, check out the developer guidance for Microsoft 365 Archive to learn more about using the Microsoft Graph APIs with Microsoft 365 Archive.
Microsoft