Office 365 Recovery and Retention Summary – In-Place Archive

This installment of Office 365 Recovery and Retention focuses on In-Place Archive.

According to Microsoft, “In-Place Archiving provides users with an alternate storage location in which to store historical messaging data. An In-Place Archive is an additional mailbox (called an archive mailbox) enabled for a mailbox user. Outlook 2007 and later and Outlook Web App users have seamless access to their archive mailbox. Using either of these client applications, users can view an archive mailbox and move or copy messages between their primary mailbox and the archive. In-Place Archiving presents a consistent view of messaging data to users and eliminates the user overhead required to manage .pst files.”

There are several methods for moving messages to the in-place archive mailbox:

• Move or copy messages manually Mailbox users can manually move or copy messages from their primary mailbox or a .pst file to their archive mailbox. The archive mailbox appears as another mailbox or .pst file in Outlook and Outlook Web App.
• Move or copy messages using Inbox rules Mailbox users can create Inbox rules in Outlook or Outlook Web App to automatically move messages to a folder in their archive mailbox. To learn more, see Learn About Inbox Rules.
• Move messages using retention policies You can use retention policies to automatically move messages to the archive. Users can also apply a personal tag to move messages to the archive. For details about archive and retention policies, see Archive and retention policies later in this topic.
• Import messages from .pst files In Exchange 2013, you can use a mailbox import request to import messages from a .pst file to a user’s archive or primary mailbox. For details, see Mailbox Import and Export Requests. You can also use the PST Capture tool to search for .pst files on computers in your organization and import .pst file data to users’ archives. Additionally, tools used to locate .pst files within an organization are also available from Microsoft partners. For a list of Microsoft partners for archiving, see “Archive and Compliance Partners” in Independent Software Vendors.

Enable In-Place Archive:

Go to Exchange Admin Panel https://outlook.office365.com/ecp > Recipients > Mailboxes > Select Mailbox > On the right side panel, click Enable under In-Place Archive: