How Does Online Archive Mailbox Work?
Every Outlook mailbox comes with 50 GB of storage, but did you know you have an additional archive mailbox that can hold at least 50 more GB?
If you send and receive large emails that contain videos, high-resolution photos or lengthy PDFs, you could quickly exhaust your storage limit.
The solution: online archive mailbox.
It’s a separate mailbox with its own storage limit, used to keep important emails you don’t want to delete but don’t want clogging up your main mailbox.
Cluttered inboxes make finding that important email a nightmare. With online archive mailbox, you can keep your inbox tidy while saving storage space.
So, how does it work?
Let’s break down the basics of online archive mailbox and how it works so you can efficiently organize your emails.
Don’t Confuse Archive Folder and Online Archive Mailbox
Microsoft has a history of confusing product names, and Outlook is no different.
The archive folder within your main mailbox is not the same thing as the online archive mailbox. The archive folder is where you store emails you want to keep but don’t want in your inbox. It’s purely organizational, and it still counts toward your main inbox’s total storage.
Online archive mailbox is separate and also includes an archive folder (in addition to inbox, sent and custom folders you create). Emails in this folder count toward your online archive mailbox’s total storage.
In the image below, you can see the folders with an orange outline make up the main mailbox, while the folders outlined in blue are part of the online archive mailbox.
How to Enable Online Archive Mailbox
By default, online archive mailbox is automatically enabled when you have used 96% of the storage space of your main mailbox.
However, if you wish to enable it before you reach that storage threshold, you’ll need to ask your IT team or managed service provider to do so.
The amount of extra storage you receive depends on your Microsoft 365 license.
| Feature | Business Basic and Standard | Business Premium |
| User mailboxes | 50 GB | 50 GB |
| Online archive mailboxes | 50 GB | 100 GB-1.5 TB |
For Business Premium, online archive mailboxes are 100 GB by default but can hold up to 1.5 TB with auto-expanding archiving enabled.
Moving Emails to Online Archive Mailbox
Now that online archive mailbox is enabled, how do you use it?
The default rules will automatically move any email older than 2 years from your main mailbox to the online archive mailbox.
Emails will be moved into the same folder name within the online archive mailbox. For example, any emails in your main inbox will be moved to the inbox folder in the online archive mailbox.
Nothing is deleted without your input; archived emails will never be deleted. Only emails more than 2 years old in your deleted folder will be permanently deleted.
You also can manually move emails to the online archive mailbox, either by dragging them to a folder or right-clicking the email, hovering over “Move” and selecting “Online Archive.”
If you don’t want emails to go to the online archive mailbox, you can right-click the email and under “Advanced actions” select “Never move to archive.”
Get Your Email Under Control
Cluttered inboxes make finding that important email a nightmare. With online archive mailbox, you can keep your inbox tidy while saving storage space.
If you need more space for those high-resolution photos or videos, contact us today.
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