How to Fix Office 365 Archiving Not Working?

Your emails are not archiving in Microsoft 365? There can be many reasons behind this. In this article, I am going to provide you with ways to resolve the Online Archive not working issue.

Know About Online Archive in Office 365

Online Archive, or In-Place Archive, is an archive feature of Microsoft 365. It is a kind of mailbox that is used to archive less important emails. The Archive mailbox is considered additional storage along with your primary mailbox in the Outlook 365 account.

Professional users who receive thousands of emails every day find it difficult to manage their primary mailboxes. That’s why Microsoft offered you the In-Place Archive function, which you once enabled. Your old emails will automatically move to the Archive mailbox, and you will get space to store other emails.

It is a very helpful feature in Microsoft 365 that is only available in Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, and E5. However, using this can also create issues like the In-Place archive not working.

Reasons Why Outlook 365 Online Archive Is Not Showing?

Your online archive option is missing, or the archive mailbox is not functioning properly in Office 365. There are many reasons behind this problem.

• You did not properly enable the In-Place Archive feature. To use this mailbox, you have to manually activate it through the admin account. This is the most common cause of the problem
• Your license does not support online archive. Only Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, and E5 can support this feature. So, check your subscription.
• If your retention policy is not properly configured or applied correctly. You may encounter this archive issue.
• Even though you have purchased the correct subscription. If you make a mistake in assigning licenses to the user account. Your archive mailbox will not work properly.
• A corrupt profile or outdated cached data stops the online archive from syncing. This will cause you an online archive not working problem.
• If there are temporary Exchange Online service disruptions or any background issues. Then, it may interfere with the online archive functions.
• One of the causes of the online archive not working is the retention hold or legal hold in the user’s mailbox.

Therefore, there are several causes of the issue that can affect your archive mailbox. To eradicate this problem, follow the methods below.

Solved Archive Mailbox Problem By Removing Retention and Litigation Hold

The retention and legal hold feature is used to preserve the content of their mailbox. If this feature is active, the users archive mailbox will not work. Therefore, I am going to provide the steps to remove the retention and litigation hold using the Admin Center. But, before doing it, you must first consult with compliance teams to remove the legal holds.

1. In your Exchange Admin Center, go to the Recipients option.
2. Click on the Mailboxes button and choose the affected mailbox.
3. Find the Retention Hold under the mailbox features.
4. Turn off to disable the settings. Then, save the changes.

If you want to remove the litigation hold, go to the Microsoft Purview Compliance portal.

1. Select the eDiscovery option, then the Core button.
2. Click on the Holds or Data Lifecycle Management option.
3. Then, in Microsoft 365, search your holds that you have applied to the user.
4. Now, you can edit or delete the hold or remove the user from the hold.

Fixed Online Archive Not Working Issue with ElcProcessingDisabled

ElcProcessingDisabled is a mailbox property that directly impacts the functionality of Online Archive Mailbox in Microsoft 365. This property controls whether your managed folder assistant processes a mailbox or not. If it is enabled, the email won’t move to the archive automatically. Therefore, I have to disable this property so that the online archive starts working. For this, I am going to use Exchange Online PowerShell.

1. First, run the PowerShell and connect to Exchange Online: Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName [email protected]
   Use your admin email in place of [email protected].
2. To check if ElcProcessingDisabled is enabled, use this command: Get-Mailbox -Identity [email protected] | FL ElcProcessingDisabled
3. Now, to disable the property, we have to set it to False: Set-Mailbox -Identity [email protected] -ElcProcessingDisabled $false
4. After that, manually start the Managed Folder Assistant to apply archive and retention policies: Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity [email protected]
5. Provide a proper user email address in “[email protected]”.

Create Retention Policies to Fix Archive Mailbox Not Working

If the Retention Compliance Policies and Retention Compliance Tags are misconfigured, then it will cause the problem of the online archive not working. These are the ones who control the content, whether it is to be preserved, deleted, or archived. But if it does not configure properly, then your archive mailbox will not work even if you have enabled the feature. To resolve this problem, you have to take several steps, like

1. To create a retention policy with Archive tags, first create an archive retention tag using this command in Exchange Online PowerShell: New-RetentionPolicyTag “Move to Archive after 2 years” `
   -Type All `
   -RetentionEnabled $true `
   -AgeLimitForRetention 730 `
   -RetentionAction MoveToArchive
2. Now, create a new retention policy with this command: New-RetentionPolicy “Default Archive Policy” `
   -RetentionPolicyTagLinks “Move to Archive after 2 years”
   Then, assign the retention policy to the mailbox; type this command: Set-Mailbox -Identity [email protected] -RetentionPolicy “Default Archive Policy”
3. Verify the process and check your assigned policy; use this command: Get-Mailbox -Identity [email protected] | FL RetentionPolicy

Now, once everything is correct, your emails will automatically move to the archive mailbox. Here are the ways to resolve the problem of the online archive not working. From this problem, you now understand that there can be a problem in the Microsoft 365 Archive mailbox. So, you should not rely on Office 365 alone. You need to take an extra step: backup Online Archive mailbox.

Secure Microsoft 365 Archive Mailbox and Data

To keep your Office 365 emails safe even when the In-Place archive is not showing. So, SysTools Office 365 Backup Software will be very helpful. A specialized tool that can easily store your entire Microsoft 365 account without any issue. The tool allows backup of the Microsoft 365 archive mailbox and saves it in PST format. So that you can easily access your archive mailbox data without any issue. That’s why many experts recommend this tool as the best alternative email archiving solution for Office 365.

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Concluding Words

The reasons the online archive is not working in your Office 365 are several. I have explained to them properly. Also, I have provided solutions to resolve the issue. The methods are used for different purposes. So follow them properly. In the end, I also explain how backing up your Office 365 data helps you in this situation.