Office 365 email archiving is a concept stuck between generations of technology. After years of backing up archives in PST files, there is a question of how does this work with the cloud and Exchange Online?

Archiving is an often overlooked feature of email services but there are many scenarios where it is useful. Users can better organize mailboxes and free up much-needed storage space; businesses are able to preserve records of email communications and ensure data security and compliance needs.

Microsoft offers its own email archiving service for Exchange Online and there are endless third party add-ins. While the Microsoft solution is very simple and easy to use, its simplicity comes at a cost. The archiving features do not offer much flexibility in implementation and some features are restricted to upper-level subscriptions with the latest release edition of Outlook.

Email archiving within Microsoft Office 365 is established by an In-Place Archive. The archive appears similar to a normal mailbox, which includes the inbox, outbox, drafts, etc. It essentially displays like another set of folders in Outlook. From a user and administrator perspective, this is the preferred archiving method. It removes the legacy PST format, which involved storing email data on a user's PC or on a server, that lacked flexibility compared to an In-Place Archive.

I hope this information on Office 365 email archiving solutions is helpful!

Regards,

Lewis