Office 365 "Online Archiving - Enable or Disable"

[Mohammed Ullah]

Online Archiving is Enabled for my Office 365 email account/mailbox. (see the attached file)

What will happened to my "online archive folder" if i Disabled this mailbox feature?

[#2]

Hi Mohammed,

If you disable the Online Archive the content will be deleted.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Here is some more information - 

"If you disable a user's archive mailbox, you can reconnect it to the user's primary mailbox within 30 days of disabling it. In this case, the original contents of the archive mailbox are restored. After 30 days, the contents of the original archive mailbox are permanently deleted and can't be recovered. So if you re-enable the archive more than 30 days after disabling it, a new archive mailbox is created."

Further details are here - Enable or disable an archive mailbox in Exchange Online.  Hope that helps.

[#4]

I agree with Nuno and Cian, content of the online archive will be permanently deleted 30 days after you have disabled it. On the other hand, it can also provide additional mailbox storage space when it is enabled.

[#5]

Thanks guys.
So what can i do if don't want to lost contents of the archive mailbox?
I mean, before Disable the feature, how do i safe contents of "online archive folder"

[#6]

Export the contents to a PST file beforehand?  See how to do this here - Export or backup email, contacts, and calendar to an Outlook .pst file

[#7]

Export to PST or move content back to Primary mailbox if mailbox storage is sufficient. Also, when you enable Litigation Hold or In-place Hold, archive mailbox content will be preserved (eDiscovery search).

[#8]

More.. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn922147(v=exchg.150).aspx

[#9]

@Cian Allner 

I have the problem, that I cannot disable Archiving.

We have quite small mailboxes, only 2-3 GB used.

But since we upgraded to a higher Office 365 version, the archive got enabled without that we wanted it.

We tried to disable it in the GUI several times, also via PowerShell, but no chance.

After some time, all Mailboxes have again an activiated archive.

Any idea, how we can permently disable the online Archive?

Thanks

Michi

[#10]

@Mohammed Ullah 

See this:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/enable-archive-mailboxes

After you disable an archive mailbox, you can reconnect it to the user's primary mailbox within 30 days of disabling it. In this case, the original contents of the archive mailbox are restored. After 30 days, the contents of the original archive mailbox are permanently deleted and can't be recovered. So if you re-enable the archive more than 30 days after disabling it, a new archive mailbox is created.

The default archive policy assigned to users' mailboxes moves items to the archive mailbox two years after the date the item is delivered. If you disable a user's archive mailbox, no action will be taken on mailbox items and they'll remain in the user's primary mailbox.

[#11]

Hi, @Kidd_Ip 

exactly this we did. Disabling in GUI or via PowerShell results in archiving automatically being enabled again.

Very frustrating