M365 – Archives & Backups

M365 – Archives & Backups 

In the past, when you archived some of your email, it created a separate folder on your computer (which is not backed up with regular mail, BTW). The only access to these archives was on that specific computer. In Microsoft 365, you can also archive email, but those archives are available from anywhere, not just your computer.

When the archiving feature is activated, any email older than two years (you can choose a different length of time) will be moved to the archives, automatically.

If the two years’ worth of data in your regular mailbox (not archived) hits the data limit, you will need to increase your license level. Or, if you know there’s a new email with a huge attachment (or a couple of them), you can move the large email to the archives, freeing up more space in your regular email.

A couple of other interesting things: there are no file size limits for the archives …. at this time! When you search, it defaults to the current mailbox, but you can select all or just specific archives as well. You can also take advantage of the very fast search option through Office.com using the web interface from a browser.

What if you have local archive folders that you’ve created before moving to M365? These can be migrated to your regular mailbox, which will back them up and then move them to the archive folder, reducing your mailbox size. You can also migrate straight to an archive folder, but these will not be backed up. —CMW