Forum Discussion
NTA-Mark
Feb 05, 2024Copper Contributor
Exchange online archive file management help
Hi, I hope someone can lend me a hand. I run a computer service company in a very rural area. Most of my customers are home users with the exception for a few businesses I take care of in my area. On...
ntamark
Feb 07, 2024Copper Contributor
Hi, I will follow up with this. since this is an insurance agency I can't just delete the mail. Because of leagle reasons and chances that the mail may be needed in a leagle suit I have to be able to recover mail from possible years ago. The reason i just don't flush it.
Dan_Snape
Feb 08, 2024Steel Contributor
Perhaps I've misunderstood what your issue is. If you have Business Standard licensing, you get a 50Gb mailbox in Exchange Online. Outlook connects to that mailbox in Exchange Online and caches some (or all) of that data locally to provide a better users experience. There is no "local" file or "Cloud archive" file. The cloud mailbox is the file.
If the mailbox is over 50Gb, then you can enable an Online Archive for the mailbox and users can move data to this separate but related mailbox (this can be automated with policies as well). This will give the user an additional 50GB of storage space. The other options is to remove data from the mailbox. You can do this by using the Outlook client to export some messages to PST (you can Google how to do this) or the user can delete messages from their mailbox. If you export to PST you're then left with an issue of how you securely manage these files, so I'd strongly recommend you don't go down this path.
My recommendation is to elevate your licensing to Business Premium, which includes eDiscovery. This allows you to create retention policies so that when users delete messages, they are retained in the tenant. In the event of a legal incident, compliance managers can search and export this data using eDiscovery (please don't think that retention of data is a backup...it most definitely isn't! You can purchase 3rd party services if you want to backup your data).
Hope this helps
If the mailbox is over 50Gb, then you can enable an Online Archive for the mailbox and users can move data to this separate but related mailbox (this can be automated with policies as well). This will give the user an additional 50GB of storage space. The other options is to remove data from the mailbox. You can do this by using the Outlook client to export some messages to PST (you can Google how to do this) or the user can delete messages from their mailbox. If you export to PST you're then left with an issue of how you securely manage these files, so I'd strongly recommend you don't go down this path.
My recommendation is to elevate your licensing to Business Premium, which includes eDiscovery. This allows you to create retention policies so that when users delete messages, they are retained in the tenant. In the event of a legal incident, compliance managers can search and export this data using eDiscovery (please don't think that retention of data is a backup...it most definitely isn't! You can purchase 3rd party services if you want to backup your data).
Hope this helps
- ntamarkFeb 08, 2024Copper ContributorHi Dan,
Thanks again for the help. I guess what is confusing me is when I use the Outlook tools and go to the mailbox clean up. When I click view Mailbox size I have 2 tabs One says local data the other says server The server tab holds these large files. That is what I am trying to backup and remove or make smaller in size.- Dan_SnapeFeb 09, 2024Steel ContributorForget using that tool. It's not really relevant for cloud based mailboxes. Remember that the local file is just a cache of the mailbox which resides in Exchange Online, and it's the mailbox that is over the limit. The only way to reduce the size of the mailbox is to remove items (ie messages, attachments, calendar entries) from it, and as an admin I wouldn't be deleting items from a mailbox on behalf of users, so generally you put it back on them by saying "Sorry...you've paid for 50Gb of mailbox size and you've reached that limit...please delete some mail" (BTW...50Gb is quite a large mailbox...I work with some large enterprises and they don't have anywhere near that for most of their users). If they don't like it, get them to pay for higher level licenses where they get 100Gb mailboxes or look into archiving and/or retention as I talked about previously.
- ntamarkFeb 09, 2024Copper ContributorHI Dan,
Thank you again for taking the time to help me understand how their mail system works. It is a bit misleading when you look at the tool. Think you are doing one thing and it really is not having much effect. To alleviate some of the issue sending/receiving mail I Exported Different folders to pst then deleted mail in those folders. Helped a little but not for long. Security is not much of an issue being mostly family members working there.
This is a 7 year accumulation on these accounts. And I'm guessing %85 have PDF and photo attachments, times more than a 100 pages so they can eat up some space. I have looked into adding to 100G. requires them to move up to an E3 license about double a seat from what they are paying now. So we were seeing if arching the online file then cleaning it up was an option. This is were the Tool was giving me the impression this could be done.
Now with your explanation it sounds like it is not possible. You mention there are 3rd party companies that can create retrievable archives of these accounts?
I was playing with my account, don't want to experiment on their accounts but my account in their company has the same issue so it good to work on. When I look at the different folders lest say SENT. I see mail back about 6 month then at the bottom you can click "view more on Microsoft Exchange". Is this where the excess must be removed? I tried a small amount to delete, seemed to remove them. When I tag a large amount down to the bottom of the list it produces an error stating not enough resources or memory close programs and try again. Errors every time. Can you confirm this is where the files need to be deleted?
I can tell you how much I appreciate to taking the time to explain this to me. Been working on computers since the days of DOS and the 5.25" floppy boot disk. Hottest machine on the horizon was a 286 processor and if you sprang for the big bucks you could get a 10MB hard disk (yes 10 megabyte). In all my time I never had to work with office outlook. Word, Excel, occasionally Power point but never Outlook. This company switch to it because another program they switch to required it. Before that they were on my web hosting and mail server. Piece of cake to manage and I did not have to learn a foreign language to work with it. LOL
I am going to discuss the license upgrade again but I'll need to know how to clean them up if they still decline. You have been a wealth of knowledge. Thank you again.