This article gives an overview of Microsoft Exchange online and explains how you can archive your emails (and email folders) in Outlook.

This article tells you how much space staff and students have on their university email accounts. It also describes the main differences in archiving emails using: 

• The Archive function, 
• The AutoArchive feature, or 
• The Online Archive.

iSolutions recommends:

• Not keeping old emails if you do not have to, particularly the emails that contain personal data
• Avoiding using your mailbox as an archive.

What you need to know about Microsoft Exchange online

What is a Microsoft Exchange online account?

A Microsoft Exchange online online account is a work or school / university email account.

Your university email account is an Exchange online account. This means that the University of Southampton is using a Microsoft Exchange online Server to provide email and store your data.

Your account includes communication and organizational features, such as:

• Email hosting
• Calendar
• Contacts and address book
• Collaborative task management functions or tools, such as the ability to delegate tasks to another user

How Microsoft Exchange online works

When you use an Exchange online account, your email messages are delivered to and saved in your mailbox on the Exchange online server. Your contacts and calendar are saved there as well.

Your Exchange online account uses several methods to access emails on the server. This will determine how your email works:

Exchange online ActiveSync; MAPI/HTTP are methods for accessing your Exchange online email, usually from a laptop, phone, or tablet. When you access or read your email, you're reading it from the Exchange online Server (not downloading or storing email on your device)

That method allows you to access your email even when you are not connected to the Internet.

How the synchronisation works on your university account

You can synchronise your Outlook data with:

• Mobile devices 
• Other applications

Outlook is regularly synchronised with the Exchange online server automatically.

Using Outlook, you will be sure that:

• Your e-mail messages, contacts, calendar events, and any other Microsoft Exchange online folders (and subfolders) are synchronised automatically 
• All Exchange online folders and subfolders can be accessed by using Outlook
• Your information is always up to date in Outlook and on the server

Outlook checks the server for updates every minute, any folder that has updates will subsequently be synchronised.

Synchronising your university mailbox and shared mailboxes on Outlook web access

Through Outlook web access you can read your emails from the server without downloading emails on your computer.

Outlook will automatically synchronise your email.

Synchronising your university mailbox and shared mailboxes on the Outlook desktop application

When you first open the Outlook desktop app and synchronise your account, you will notice that any folder with more than a few thousand messages is going to take some time to fully come down.

This delay is due to Outlook’s design and sync engine. What happens when you synchronise your account:

1. Outlook will start downloading emails on your computer
2. At first, you will see the 512 newest messages in a folder at the initial start of sync. 
3. Then the rest of the folder's contents will be backfilled before you see any mail that arrives after this point. 
   This is why it will look like you are not getting new mail when a folder is still going through initial sync. When you synch a folder with greater than a couple thousand messages, you will see the message "Updating local..." a lot before the newer mail starts arriving.
4. Once the sync process has finished, you will start receiving new emails.

Since Outlook has a limit on how many folders can be synced at a time, there can be a queue of folders waiting. The Inbox does get high priority and it will generally sync before other folders.

A shared mailbox uses a generic email address. Although your university mailbox and the generic mailboxes shared with you are separated, the Offline Outlook Data (.ost or OST) files are linked together. Offline Outlook Data Files (.ost) are a synchronised copy of your mailbox information stored on your local computer.

Please remember that:

• This aspect can increase the size of the OST files you are synchronising,
• Emails with files attached can request more time than usual to be synchronised on the Outlook desktop app.
• Offline Outlook Data Files can use a lot of the free space on your computer’s storage memory.

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Emails and archive space available

Primary email account

Staff and students get 100 GB of primary email account space for:

• emails 
• archive.

Online archive

Staff have an online archive that has an extra 100 GB of space on top of the 100 GB in your Primary Mailbox.

What space am I using when I archive emails and email folders in Outlook?

Feature	Using primary email account space	Using primary email account extra space	Storing files on an external source	Storing files on OneDrive
Archive	Yes	-	-	-
Online Archive	-	Yes – available for staff	-	-
AutoArchive	-	-	Yes – You can decide to store your data there	Yes – You can decide to store your data there

 

If you need guidance on seeing how much mailbox storage you have used, please read the article "Mailbox storage limits in Outlook".

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4 reasons why archiving emails is a good practice

Archiving email is a good solution for 5 reasons:

• Storage
• Restoration
• Security
• Productivity
• Compliance

Storage

When email data is stored on live servers, it can greatly reduce performance as the server gets fuller.

Email archiving moves data to a secure off-site server or cloud environment. 

Restoration

Email archiving can speed up the process whenever your data needs to be restored. This is because the archived data takes up less space.

Restoring non-archived emails becomes faster and easier because the mail server’s data load is smaller.

Security

Archived emails are protected as the emails in your live environment. Your data are preserved and safeguarded with continuous backup and recovery capabilities.

Emails often contain sensitive information. Losing them by accidentally deleting emails can affect your work and the whole University. 

Productivity

Searching for a specific email or subject can affect live server performances. That happens because charging tons of email data can:

• Make servers very slow 
• Reduce server performances. 

You can set up an automatic email archiving command based on your habits. This will:

• Save you a lot of time deleting emails or moving them to Personal Storage Table (PST) files
• Give you the ability to easily access archived and backed-up email data.

 

Archiving emails and email folders using Online Archive

Overview

Online archiving moves items from your inbox to the cloud (on a server). Your items will be available from everywhere, though you must be connected to the Internet.

In Outlook, the online archiving folder appears in the Navigation Pane as:

• "Online Archive –  MailName@soton.ac.uk" on Outlook for Windows
  
  
  
• "In-Place Archive – Name Surname" on Outlook Web Access (OWA)
  
  
  
• "Online Archive" on Outlook for Apple macOS
  

You can create rules to move your messages within it or manually move them when necessary. Online Archive will maintain the folder’s structure.

Please keep in mind that items archived in your Online archived will not appear in searches from the Inbox. That is because the Online archive folder is a different mailbox.

Recommendations:

Use the Archive feature to keep your Inbox clear of messages that you have already answered or acted on. You can store items in the Archive folder and still access them easily. You can also delete messages or move them to specific folders

If you are managing large mailboxes, you can set an Archive Policy that moves items to an Online Archive after a specific amount of time. 

Setting up Online Archive from Outlook desktop application

You can archive your emails to your Online Archive in 2 ways:

1. Moving them manually
2. Creating rules to move them before or after a specific date. 

Move your emails manually

To move them, you can drag and drop them to your In-Place Archive’s folders or follow the steps below:

1. Select the message(s) you want to move

2. From the toolbar, select the icon "Move to"

3. Select the option "Archive – Online Archive – your name"

The message(s) will be moved automatically.

 

If you change your mind, you can move your messages from the In-Place Archive folder to your inbox or another folder as follows:

1. Open your "Archive – Online Archive" folder

2.  Select the message(s) you want to move

3. From the toolbar, select the icon "Move to"

4. Select the option that fits better for you 

 

Move your emails using rules

1. Right-click the email or folder you want to archive

2. Select "Rules" from the drop-down menu that appears

3. Select the option "Create Rule…"

4. Now set up your rule by checking all the options you need (for example the sender or a specific email’s subject)

5. Select the button "Select folder…" to set the right folder for you

6. Select the "Online Archive" folder or subfolder that works for you (your personal folder or a shared archive folder). 

If you need to create a new subfolder, select the button "New".

7. Select the button "OK". You will see that the folder you have will appear as your destination folder.

8. Select the button "OK"

9. You will see a new screen saying that the rule:

• has been created
• is a client-only rule (this happens because you have created it in the desktop application)

10. Check or uncheck the box to run the rule to messages with the same specifications, then select the button "OK".

Your messages will be automatically moved to the selected folder. Depending on the dimension of the messages, this action can take a while.

 

Online Archive on Outlook Web Access (OWA)

You can archive your emails to your Online Archive moving them manually.

To move your emails manually, you can drag and drop them to your In-Place Archive’s folders or follow the steps below:

1. Select the message(s) you want to move

2. From the toolbar, select the icon "Move to"

3. Select the option "In-Place Archive – your Name Surname" from the drop-down menu

5. Now select your preferred option (or create a new folder within the archive)

The message(s) will be moved automatically.

 

If you change your mind, you can move your messages from the In-Place Archive folder to your inbox or another folder. To do that:

1. Open your "In-place Archive" folder

2. Select the message(s) you want to move

3. From the toolbar, select the icon "Move to"

4. Choose the option that fits better for you.

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Archiving emails and email folders using the Archive button

The Archive folder is one of Outlook’s default folders (such as Inbox, or Sent Items). All accounts have access to an Archive folder.

You can archive emails using the Archive button (next to "Delete") both on:

• Outlook web access (OWA)
  
  
  
• Outlook for Windows
  
  
  
• Outlook for Apple macOS
  

It moves your email from the Inbox to the Archive folder. Please keep in mind that:

• The Archive does not reduce the overall size of the mailbox. This happens because the Archive option is part of the main mailbox section. 
• Items in Archive are available both in OWA and on the Outlook desktop app (on your computer).

You can access the Archive folder from the Navigation Pane:

• Outlook Web Access (OWA):
  
  
  
• Outlook for Windows:
  
• Outlook for Apple macOS:
   

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Archiving emails and email folders using Outlook AutoArchive

Overview

AutoArchive is an Outlook feature that allows you to manage the space in your mailbox or on the server. You can set up Autoarchive to move automatically items to an archive location.

What happens when you set up AutoArchive

Once you have set up your settings, AutoArchive will:

• Run in the background and automatically goes through all your mailbox folders
• Maintain the folder structure when it moves the emails, so you will see the same structure. 
• Move all your emails from these folders to a Personal Storage Table (PST or .pst) file on your local computer or on OneDrive. It archives locally in your computer: everything that has been moved there will not be available to you either online or on another device.
• Keep your mailbox smaller

Notes about using AutoArchive and Personal Storage Table (PST) files

1. If the hard drive that contains your Personal Storage Table becomes unusable, these messages are lost. 
2. If you want, you can migrate a local Personal Storage Table (.pst or PST) file to your Online Archive. 
3. You can always open your PST files from the Southampton Virtual Environment (SVE), only if your .pst file is available on SVE ( either your Filestore or Onedrive). Please bear in mind that this action can take a while. 

Setting up AutoArchive from Outlook desktop application

You can change many aspects of your AutoArchive such as:

1. How often AutoArchive runs
2. Where it stores archived items
3. How long Outlook will keep the items before archiving them.

Step-by-step instructions

Step 1 – Create the recipient folder

1. From Outlook’s ribbon, select the button "New items"

2. Select "More items"

3. Select "Outlook Data File…"

4. Provide the name Archive for the new PST file and select OK.

5. Outlook will create a new Archive folder, you will find it in the Navigation Pane. In the example below, the new folder is called "My Outlook Data File – Test"

6. You can now start moving your emails in it and create a rule to move their selected emails automatically

 

Step 2 – Create your archive settings

1. From Outlook’s ribbon, select the button "File"

2. Select "Tools"

3. Select the option "Clean Up Old Items…"

4. Select to archive specific folders / subfolders

5. Now you can choose:

1. The folder whose emails you want to save in the archive
2. The option to archive items older than the given date
   

6. Select the Browse button to choose the PST files to store the emails in it.

7. Choose the recipient you have created in Step 1 above

8. Select OK

9. Select OK to confirm the Archive settings

 

Step 3 – Create AutoArchive rules

1. From the ribbon, select the button "File"

2. Select "Options"

3. Select "Advanced"

4. Go to the section AutoArchive and select the button "AutoArchive Settings"

5.    Check the box "Run AutoArchive every n days"

6. Choose the number of days and check the options you want to run

7. Browse the folder and select the one you have created during Step 1

8. Select OK

For more information about AutoArchive settings, please read the Microsoft Support page "AutoArchive settings explained".

Find more information about changing AutoArchive settings for an individual folder on the Microsoft Support page "Archive older items automatically - Microsoft Support".

 

Setting up AutoArchive using Outlook web access (OWA) from any browser

Use the Retention policies settings in the Outlook Web App to apply a policy to your messages and the folders in your mailbox. Retention policies control how long your messages will be saved. Archive policies control how long messages are left in an email folder before they're moved to an archive.

You might be able to add or remove optional retention policies and archive policies that were set up by the person who manages your mailbox. Required policies can't be removed.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Form the ribbon, select the Settings icon

2. Select "Email" from the left menu

3. Select the option "Retention policies"

4. Select the link "+ Add new policies"

You can choose between deleting your messages or archiving them.

Deletion policies available:

• 1 Week Delete (7 days)
• 1 Month Delete (1 month)
• 1 Year Delete (1 year)
• 5 Year Delete (5 years)
• Never Delete (Never).

Archive policies available:

• Personal 1-year move to archive (1 year)
• Personal 5-year move to archive (5 years)
• Personal never move to archive (Never).

Please note:

• You cannot manage retention policies for your calendar
• Retention and archive policies are processed once in seven days.
• You cannot access your .pst files from Outlook web access

 

Accessing your Outlook Data File (.pst) using Outlook for Windows

To open your .pst files you need to use the Outlook Desktop application.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. From the ribbon, select the button "File"

2. Select "Open & Export"

3. Select "Open Outlook Data file"

4. Select the file you want to open, then select "OK"

5. Expand the top level of the Outlook data file in the Outlook Navigation pane to see the subfolders in the file. Click each subfolder to see the contents.

 

Accessing your Outlook Data File (.pst) using Outlook for Mac

If you are using the new version of Outlook, you will notice that the function "Import" is greyed out and not usable. To import your .pst file you will need to revert Outlook to Legacy Outlook as follow.

Step 1 – Revert to Legacy Outlook

To access your .pst file, you will need to revert to the legacy version of Outlook by:

1. Opening Outlook application

2. Select "Help" from the menu bar

3. Select the option "Revert to Legacy Outlook"

4. Confirm your choice by selecting the button "Revert"

5. You'll be asked why you're reverting, but how you answer is unimportant for the process

6. You will need to re-enter your university email details once Outlook relaunches in legacy mode

 

Step 2 – Import your files

1.    Select File from the menu bar

2.    Select Import and choose the option "Outlook for Windows archive file (.pst)"

3.    Select the button "Finish" to close the dialogue box

4.    Back in Outlook, the archive you have just imported appears under the tab "On my computer".

5.    All the folders within "On My Computer" will appear empty in your archive until you click the "Import Now" button

Please follow the steps 6-8 only if you want to switch back from Legacy Outlook to the new Outlook:

6.    Select the button "Import"

It may take a while for the items to Import, depending on the size of your archive. During the import time it is normal for the items:

• Remaining count to rise as it discovers items to import, and
• Fall as it carries this out

7.    At the end of the process, you will get a notification that the data has been imported and the Import Summary

8.    Your archive will now be available under the folder "archive PST"

Please note: if you go back to current version of Outlook from legacy, your archive might not be available still.

 

How to switch to the "New Outlook" from Legacy Outlook

You can switch to the "New Outlook" any time by following these steps:

1. Select "Outlook" from the menu bar
2. Select "New Outlook" from the drop-down menu
3. Confirm your choice by selecting the button "Open New Outlook"
4. Outlook will turn off and on again showing its new interface and functions

Another way to witch from Legacy Outlook to the New Outlook is using the toggle along the top of the Outlook window:

A new dialogue box will appear

Check the box "Don't show me this again" if you do not want to see this message in the future

Select the button "Open New Outlook"

Outlook will revert to the new Outlook 365, relaunching Outlook in that process.

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Tips and recommendations

• Do not keep old emails if you do not have to, particularly the emails that contain personal data
• Avoid using your mailbox as an archive
• If the hard drive that contains your Personal Storage Table becomes unusable, these messages are lost.

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