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In order to keep your Outlook running as efficiently as possible, we recommend keeping your mailbox size as small as possible. Large mailboxes make browsing and searching messages slower, can cause performance degradation, crashes, and are more prone to corruption. The maximum allowed user mailbox size is outlined in the table below:
| |
Employees & Related |
Retiree |
Student |
Alumni |
| Main Mailbox |
10 GB |
10 GB |
5 GB |
5 GB |
| Shared Mailbox |
20 GB |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
| Archive Mailbox |
100 GB |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
| |
|
|
|
|
Microsoft Exchange Online & Outlook offers a feature called archiving that, once enabled for your mailbox, will reduce its size by automatically moving older messages from the main mailbox to the separate archive mailbox called In-Place Archive in Outlook web app and new version of Outlook desktop app. In the legacy version of Outlook desktop app, a.k.a. Outlook classic, it is called Online Archive. You may request automated archiving to be enabled for your main mailbox or a shared mailbox by opening a ticket. Please note this feature is not available for students and alumni. By default, the Managed Folder Assistant processes a mailbox once in seven days in Exchange Online. So the archive policy will take effect on a mailbox within 7 days after the archive mailbox is enabled.
How old a message has to be before it gets archived is determined by which retention policy was assigned to your mailbox when automated archiving was enabled. By default, the 365 days (1 year) policy gets assigned but if this is not sufficient to reduce the mailbox size below your maximum allowed, then 180 days (6 months) or 90 (3 months) days policy can be assigned.
Note that your mailbox includes a system folder called Archive. This folder is NOT related to the automated archiving feature discussed in this article (click here for more details).
Accessing In-Place Archive
Your archive mailbox is called Online Archive in Outlook desktop app and InPlace Archive in Outlook web app.
Outlook web app
To sign-in to Outlook web app, launch your browser (Microsoft Edge is recommended) and open this URL: https://outlook.office365.com
Once enabled, you will find the archive under your folder list on the left. You may need to scroll down to see it, if your mailbox has lots of folders or click on Folders to collapse the list. Click on In-Place Archive - Your Name to, expand the list of folders that mirrors the list of folders found in your main mailbox.
Outlook desktop app
The new version of Outlook desktop app looks just like Outlook web app.
In the legacy Outlook desktop app, you can find the archive on your folder list on the left side. It will appear below the list of folders belonging to your main mailbox, and you may need to scroll down to see it if your mailbox has lots of folders. It is called Online Archive followed by the e-mail address of the main mailbox. You must expand this header by clicking on the little triangle icon that appears on the front of Online Archive - UWinID@uwindsor.ca to view the list of your archive folders.
NOTE: In older versions, if you click on the header itself, no messages will be displayed. This is working as designed. You must click on one of the folders listed under the header to display its contents.
Archiving Settings
Once automated archiving was enabled, you can modify the archiving settings on individual folders only by assigning a different retention policy to any folder you created.
- Launch Outlook web app (or new version of Outlook desktop app for Windows).
- Right click on the folder name and select Assign policy from the pop-up menu
- Select one of the archiving policies or retention labels.
Note that the "parent folder policy" (default setting) is synonymous with the retention policy that was assigned to your mailbox by the administrator when archiving was enabled, and is applied to all folders in your mailbox.
Archive Folder
The Archive folder is one of the default folders in Outlook, like Inbox, Sent Items, and the Deleted Items folder. You can move messages to the Archive folder without deleting them by clicking the Archive button. however, "archiving" messages this way doesn’t reduce mailbox size since the messages are still stored in the user’s primary mailbox but a different folder.
