Microsoft 365 Archive Mailboxes - x360Cloud

Written By Tami Sutcliffe (Super Administrator)

Updated at October 2nd, 2023

Overview: Archive mailbox protection

Using x360Cloud, you are now able to protect primary mailboxes for your clients and ensure that emails are backed up in their archive mailboxes, too. 

Archived emails which have been backed up can be restored into a regular mailbox of a specified end user in the same way as regular emails.

What are archive mailboxes?

"Archiving in Microsoft 365 (also called in-place archiving) provides users with additional mailbox storage space. After you turn on archive mailboxes, users can access and store messages in their archive mailboxes by using Microsoft Outlook and Outlook on the web. Users can also move or copy messages between their primary mailbox and their archive mailbox." [Source:  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/enable-archive-mailboxes ]

Important notes on primary mail boxes

IMPORTANT: Protecting your archive mailbox in x360Cloud is supplementary to your primary mailbox protection.

First, ensure primary mailbox protection is on: When you are enabling your archive mailbox protection, you must first ensure that your primary mailbox is also protected.

  • No duplicate data in backups: Once both your primary mailbox and your archive mailboxes have been initially backed up, any emails moved from the primary mailbox to the archive mailbox (and vice versa) will not be processed or backed up again. This is to prevent data duplication.
  • Possible discrepancy in data size: As a result of the data not being duplicated, you may notice a difference in the amount of data reported for your archive mailbox in Microsoft 365 and in x360Cloud. Again: this difference is expected and is due to the no-duplicate backup policy.
  • Why primary mailbox protection matters: If your primary mailbox is not protected and you move its older emails to the archive mailbox after its initial backup, these older emails will not be included in incremental archive mailbox backups. However, any new emails received after the initial backup and moved to the archive mailbox will be safely backed up.


How to turn on archive mailbox protection

STEP 1. To start protecting archive mailboxes for Microsoft 365 end user accounts from within your existing organization, navigate to the organization’s Settings page.

Set the Archive mailbox toggle to ON:

REMINDER: When you are enabling your archive mailbox protection, you must first ensure that your primary mailbox is also protected.

STEP 2. Navigate to the Archive Mailboxes tab on the organization’s Account page.

Under Protection Status, set the toggle to on for those end user accounts whose archive mailboxes you want to start protecting:

Toggling on protection for these accounts will enable backup of emails stored in their archive mailboxes.

Note:  The latest backup status of archived mailboxes is also shown on this page.

Important: At this stage, archive mailboxes selected for protection will not impact SLA status of an organization. This means that the absence of a successful backup for an archive mailbox within 24 hours will not impact organization-level backup status and will not trigger a "Some organizations require your attention” email notification.

How to view backup status for protected archive mailboxes

The latest backup status for protected archive mailboxes is available on the Accounts page.

To see extended backup reports (and backup progress for your protected archive mailboxes), navigate to the Reports page under your organization and switch to the Archive mailboxes tab:

How to locate and restore archive mailbox emails

1. To find a backed up archive mailbox email, perform a keyword search, just as you would when searching for regular email:

2. Use the Smart Search filters to narrow results to emails of an individual end user account.

3. Use Filter by collection to find archive mailbox emails located in a specific folder.

  • You can also search for x360Cloud archive emails (as well a regular emails) using the following fields:
  • from
  • to
  • content
  • subject
  • receivedDate

Search syntax examples:

Find an email subject containing the word 'application':

Syntax:           subject: application

Find an email sent by jdoe@company.net

Syntax:           from: jdoe@company.net

4. After you have located the desired emails, select them and launch restoration by clicking the Restore selected button:

How to restore an entire archive mailbox

1. To restore an entire archive mailbox for a specific end user account, navigate to the Accounts page, and select the desired user account on the Microsoft 365 users tab.

2. Then, in the side bar on the right,  click the Restore user button:

3. When the Restore User window opens, complete all needed fields and then check the Restore Microsoft 365 Archive Mailbox checkbox:

4. Finally, click the Restore button.

The restoration status can be monitored in the Recent Activity section on the organization’s Dashboard page.

Where are archive mailbox emails restored?

When restoration is initiated, archive mailbox emails will be restored to the regular mailbox of the specified target user account using the following path:

<user-specified restore folder>/<Archive Mailbox>/

 

 


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