How to Move Archived Emails Back to Inbox in Office 365? Complete Guide to Follow

If you have been using Office 365 for quite a long, then probably you have archived mailboxes on your system to save some space. Archiving Office 365 mailbox is a common practice that is done by almost every Office 365 user to clean up or free some space for easy accessibility of emails. But, when the user wants to move archived emails back to Inbox in Office 365, then it becomes a cumbersome task.

You may have known that using Office 365 import service is not at all an easy task. It’s impossible to perform the operation whenever a user wants to move archived mailbox to Office 365 account. Additionally, the import service requires an Admin account to perform the operation. The Office 365 Admin can neither perform this hectic task again and again nor it can provide an admin account to any user because of security issues.

However, there are some other workarounds, using which users can move back the archived emails into their account without the need for Admin credentials. Therefore, in this article, we will walk you through a step-by-step process to perform the task without any hassle.

Quick Way to Move Archived Emails Back to Office 365

• Step 1. Download, Install & Launch Software on PC.
• Step 2. Choose Mailbox Category & Apply Date Filter.
• Step 3. Select Local File/Folder Path & Authenticate.
• Step 4. Provide Admin Credentials & Authenticate.
• Step 5. Select User Accounts & Click on Start Import

Methods to Move Archived Emails Back to Inbox in Office 365

Apart from the import service of Office 365, there are other workarounds that are way simpler and faster than that. A user can either move archive mailbox to Office 365 using MS Outlook or take the help of a professional solution to perform the task in a few clicks.

Also Read : How to Backup Office 365 Essentials Account – Complete Guide

Method #1: Using MS Outlook to Move Archive Folder to Inbox in Outlook

If you already have the .pst file containing archived emails, then you can use the Import/Export feature of MS Outlook for moving emails from it. Follow the steps below for detailed working steps:

Step #1: First Synchronize Office 365 Account in MS Outlook:

• Open MS Outlook and click on the File tab
• Select the “Add Account” option

• Enter details of the Office 365 user account and click on Finish.

Step #2: Move Archived Emails back to Inbox in Office 365:

• Open the MS Outlook application and click on the File tab. 
• From the sidebar, select the “Open & Export” option & then click the “Import/Export” option.

• Now, from the Import/Export wizard, select the “Import from another program or file” option. 

• Next, select the “Outlook data file (.pst)” option from the list. 

• In the next step, browse the .pst file containing archive emails.

• Browse the Inbox folder to move archived emails.
• Finally, click the Finish button to start the email migration & move archive mailbox to Office 365.

Limitations of Using the Above Method

• The time taken to synchronize Office 365 with MS Outlook is quite high.
• Sometimes automatic configuration fails due to synchronization blocked by Admin
• A similar long process needs to be done for each user when need to perform the operation with multiple accounts.

Must Read: How to Download Office 365 Emails? Top 3 Methods of 2022

Method #2: Automated Solution to Move Archived Mailbox to Office 365

To overcome all the limitations of both the import service and MS Outlook solutions, we recommend using SysTools Import PST to Office 365 Tool. This utility is specially designed to execute such complex tasks. This tool allows users to move archived mailboxes to Office 365 with or without the Admin account. It means any user can move their emails back into their account without an admin account. Apart from this, users can also categorize emails by using the date-range filter. Additionally, using the Admin account, the tool provides the option to move emails from archive to inbox Outlook shared mailbox.

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The Following are the Working Steps to Move Archived Emails to Inbox in Outlook 365:

Step 1. Once you have downloaded the software on your PC. Launch it and Outlook as your source platform and Office 365 as the destination platform.

Step 2. Within the same interface, define the categories to be imported into Office 365 under Workload Selection.

Step 3. Use the Date-Range Filter to precisely import mailbox data based on selected dates. Proceed by clicking Next.

Step 4. In the Source tab. select the folder path to add the Outlook PST files. Organize PST files into folders labeled according to respective O365 email IDs such as:

Establish folders on the root drive, like E:/PST/[email protected]/ (for all of user1’s PST files).

Then, select the folder “E:/PST/” within our tool as the Import Folder Path.

Step 5. Click Validate to confirm the necessary permissions are granted to the files. Following validation, permissions will be authorized for the source platform. Proceed by clicking Next.

Step 6. Input the Office 365 admin email account and application ID for the destination. Click Validate to verify the credentials. Once validated, permissions will be granted to the admin account. Click Next.

Step 7. On the Users screen, several options exist for including users from the source account needing processing:

• Fetch Users – Automatically retrieves users from the Source.
• Import Users – Imports users through CSV.
• Download Template – Obtains a template for generating a CSV file.

Select the appropriate method for adding users.

Step 8. The list of source users is displayed on the screen. You can search for a specific mailbox and select that user for data import. Use the Show Selected toggle bar to display only the chosen users, simplifying selective data import.

Step 10. Click Validate to authorize the selected source and destination user accounts. Once validation is completed, click the “OK” button.

Step 11. Finally, click the Start Import button to initiate the import process.

After finishing the process, the user can log in to their account and check for the archived emails in their Inbox. In case the user wants to move archived emails to a different folder then the tool provides an option for that in Advance settings.

Also Read: How to Export Office 365 Mailboxes to PST? Complete Tutorial

Conclusion

Archiving emails to save mailbox space is common among Office 365 users. But, when users want to move archived emails back to Inbox in Office 365, then it becomes a hectic task. To solve this problem, we have provided two easiest and fastest methods to move archived mailbox to Office 365 user account. To perform an operation for a single user, you can take the help of a manual solution, but when the number of users is more than one it’s better to take the help of an automated solution from SysTools which is recommended above.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Q1. How to change archive settings in Office 365?

A – You can change the AutoArchive setting by following the below steps. 

• Step 1. Navigate to File > Options > and click on Advanced.
• Step 2. From AutoArchive, hit the AutoArchive Settings button.
• Step 3. Hit the Run AutoArchive every n days box and set the value of n – for how often to run AutoArchive.
• Step 4. Choose other required options, like having Outlook delete old items instead of archiving them.

If you need to change the AutoArchive settings for an individual folder in Outlook 365

• Step 1. Move toward the folder list, and then right-click on the folder you want to change the AutoArchive settings for. Then hit the Properties option. 
• Step 2. Now, choose the required option accordingly from the AutoArchive tab.

Q2. What to do if my archive mailbox is full in Office 365?

A – In order to free up some space in the archive mailbox, you can do a few things such as – 

• Tip 1. You can delete those items, which is not required anymore.
• Tip 2.  Moreover, you can empty the deleted items folder in Outlook 365.
• Tip 3.  Lastly, you can back up the archive mailbox using an Office 365 mailbox backup tool and export its data to the local system and you can easily delete all the data present in the archive mailbox. 

In this way, you can easily free up some space in your archive mailbox in Office 365.

Q3. Why are all emails going into the archive instead of the inbox in Outlook 365?

A – This is a quite common issue and can be caused by some wrong setting in Rules. However, you can easily check the rules set for you. 

Follow the below steps for the same:

• Step 1. Log in to the Outlook Web App (OWA), using your account credentials. 
• Step 2. Navigate to Settings and then go to Mail.
• Step 3. Now click on Automatic Processing and then click on Inbox and Sweep Rule.

Here you can easily check all the rules applied to you and your mailbox, and disable all the unnecessary rules. Furthermore, this will fix this issue and you will start getting new emails in your inbox.

Steps For Outlook Client 

• Step 1. From the Home tab, navigate to Rules. Then click on Manage Rules & Alerts.  
• Step 2. Now, from the Manage Rules & Alerts window, you check or uncheck the required rules for your mailbox. 
• Step 3. Make sure you have only checked the required rules. 

In this way fix this issue in the Outlook email client.