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Enable Online Archive Using PowerShell

Vanessa Bejarano
Updated

When you want to enable the archive mailbox for all or multiple users in your organization you can better use PowerShell.

Note:Make sure that you have installed the Exchange Online Module before you continue. Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell – BEMO Docs (bemopro.com)

 

The online archive mailbox needs to be enabled per mailbox. The advantage of PowerShell is that we can easily select all users or a group of users. First, open PowerShell and connect to Exchange Online:

# Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName useradmin@contoso.com
 

To enable the archive mailbox for a single user we can use the following PowerShell command:

Enable-Mailbox -Identity useradmin@contoso.com -Archive
 
After you have enabled the Online Archive it will become visible in Outlook below the primary mailbox. 
 
To enable the archive mailbox for all users we can first get all mailboxes that don’t have an archive GUID set, which indicates that an archive mailbox isn’t active. And filter the selection on only user mailboxes.
# You can first verify the list of mailboxes with:
Get-Mailbox -Filter {ArchiveStatus -Eq "None" -AND RecipientTypeDetails -eq "UserMailbox"} | ft
# Enable archive mailbox for all users:
Get-Mailbox -Filter {ArchiveStatus -Eq "None" -AND RecipientTypeDetails -eq "UserMailbox"} | Enable-Mailbox -Archive

 

Enable Auto-Expanding Archive

When your online archive is running out of storage you can enable auto-expanding archive if your license supports it. Auto-Expanding Archive can be enabled for the whole tenant or for a specific user. There are however some restrictions that you will need to keep in mind before enabling it:

  • You can’t turn it off after you enabled it
  • Recovering or restoring an inactive mailbox isn’t possible when auto-expand archive is enabled for that mailbox. You will need to use content search to recover it (or a third-party backup solution)
  • It can take up to 30 days until additional storage is provided

Make sure that you are connected to Exchange Online in PowerShell and run the following command to enable auto-expanding archive for every user in your tenant:

 
# Connect to Exchange Online 
Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName useradmin@contoso.com
 
# Enable auto-expanding archive
Set-OrganizationConfig -AutoExpandingArchive
 

You can verify the setting with the following command:

Get-OrganizationConfig | select AutoExpandingArchiveEnabled
 

When auto-expanding is enabled for your organization it will automatically enable it for new and existing mailboxes in your tenant.

Keeping the restrictions in mind and the inability to restore inactive mailboxes, it’s sometimes better to enable the expanding archive only for specific users. Again connect to Exchange Online and enable the expanding online archive for a mailbox with:

# Enable it for a single mailbox
Enable-Mailbox useradmin@contoso.com -AutoExpandingArchive
 

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