Overview
At Michigan State University there is a standard 25GB quota for current faculty and staff. This quota can be increased for individuals with a specific business need up to a maximum of 100GB. If storage quotas are exceeded, the mailbox can become unusable and inaccessible. To manage this quota, Office 365 email administrators can enable an option for specific accounts to perform online archiving.
When enabled by administrators, this option performs the following actions:
- At regular intervals any email over 2 years old is moved to an online archive folder at the bottom of your email that does not count towards the quota
- Email is moved to folders of the same name as the folder in the primary mailbox (i.e anything in the inbox is over 2 years old will be moved to the Online archive folder)
This option is off by default and can only be enabled for current faculty and staff with A3 or A5 licenses.
Searching the Online Archive
When searching for messages that have been moved into the Online Archive, you MUST select All Mailboxes (Outlook Desktop Client) or All Folders (Outlook Web Access) for the search to include the messages located in the Online Archive.
If you know the exact name of the folder you need to search, alternatively you could open that folder from your normal mailbox folder and then also search in the equivalent folder name in your online archive.
Example 1: Outlook in Windows
Example 2: Outlook Web
How to Access the Online Archive in Outlook for Mac
If you have a Microsoft 365 account and your IT or Microsoft 365 admin has enabled the archive mailbox for you, your Online Archive folder will appear in your Outlook folder pane below your standard folder.
- Open Outlook for Mac
- In the folder pane of your email, find and expand your Online Archive folder
- Explore your Online Archive folders
Currently, Outlook for Mac supports only the Mail module. If you moved folders, calendar items, contacts, tasks, or notes to your archive in any other version of Outlook, such as Outlook for Windows, you won't be able to view them in the online archive mailbox using Outlook for Mac.
Changing the Archive Settings for a Specific Subfolder
You cannot modify the settings for the entire mailbox if archiving has been turned on but you can modify the default, 2 year archive setting for individual folders.
Outlook Web
This is the recommended approach for Mac users. It can be used by Windows users as well.
- Log in to spartanmail.msu.edu
- Select the 3 dots next to the folder
- Select Assign Policy and then choose the desired archive policy for that folder
Outlook in Windows
- Right-click on the folder and select properties
- When the properties window opens, select Policy and then choose the desired archive policy for that folder
