How to Enable or Disable In Place Archive in Microsoft Office 365?

  

Rollins Duke   
Published: June 11th, 2025 • 7 Min Read

Users who have a hard time managing their mailboxes in Microsoft 365. In-Place Archive is great for them. But, what is that and how can you use it? All the questions related to In-place archive will be explained in this article. Including how to enable In-Place Archive in Office 365. So, let’s get started.

What is In-Place Archive?

In Office 365, In-Place Archive is a secondary mailbox that you can use to store your older emails that you don’t need on a daily basis. This mailbox is different from the primary mailbox where the purpose of this is to store your data for future reference or emergency. The concept of this is the same as an archive folder, however, they are both different to each other. The archive folder is located within the primary mailbox but the In-Place Archive is located separately with the mailbox. Other than storing your data, this feature also provides several features which we mentioned below.

Key Features of In-Place Archive

• It is a secondary mailbox separate from your primary mailbox where you can store less frequently accessed emails.
• This mailbox supports retention and archive policies that allow you to automatically move your emails to the archive after a certain period.
• You can also see the In-Place Archive folder in your Outlook and Outlook on the web application for easily accessing your emails.
• It can auto-expand its storage capabilities starting from 100 GB and extend as you need.

Now, you understand the In-Place Archive mailbox in Office 365. To use this feature you need to first enable it. In the upcoming section of the article we will see how we can  do it.

Prerequisites Before Using In-Place Archive

Before starting the process, we have to first prepare ourselves. Below are some points that you must follow when you are using the In-Place Archive.

• In-Place Archive feature is available in Microsoft 365 E3, E5 and Microsoft 365 Business Premium. So, check if your plan supports this archive feature.
• Make sure that your mailbox must be hosted in Exchange Online. Shared mailbox supported this archive feature, but you cannot enable for resource mailbox or mail users.
• To enable the In-Place Archive you must have the necessary permissions from the administrators.
• For enabling and managing you must access Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal or Exchange Admin Center.

Once you fulfill all these features we are good to go to our process of enabling In-Place Archive.

How to Enable In-Place Archive in Office 365?

Enabling your In-Place Archive can be done two ways: Exchange Admin Center and Microsoft 365 Admin Center. We will explain each method step-by-step. So, properly follow them.

Using Exchange Admin Center to Enable In-Place Archive

1. First of all, login to the Exchange Admin Center portal. Then, click on the Recipients option.
   
2. Select the Mailboxes option to see the list of the user mailboxes. Click on the desired Office 365 user(s) from the list and scroll down the details panel from the right side
   
3. You can see In-Place Archive heading with Enable option in the bottom of the details panel
   
4. Click on Enable option under the heading In-Place Archive. Choose Yes when warning message pops up
   

Enable In-Place Archive in Office 365 with Microsoft Admin Center

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center with a global administrator.
2. Go to the Users and click on the Active users.
3. Select a user by clicking on the name of the user.
4. In the More settings option, choose the Mail button.
5. Scroll down to Mailbox settings, then click on the Edit Exchange properties.
6. From there, you can see the In-Place Archive. Go to this section and click the Enable option.
7. Confirm and Save the changes.

Here are the steps to enable your In-Place Archive, once you have done this. The emails will automatically go to the mailbox. You can manually archive your email, by drag and drop method. If you want to disable the In-Place Archive. Then, follow the same steps of the above ways and click on the Disable option.

Limitations of In-Place Archive Feature

In-Place Archive helps you in managing your mailbox by storing the less priority emails to another mailbox. However, there are some drawbacks of using this. Such as.

• You can use this feature only in certain Microsoft 365 plans like E3, E5 and business premium.
• The mailbox only archives those data that have archive policies. So, you need to manually apply policies or move data on your own.
• Each user is allowed to have only one In-Place Archive mailbox. However, you can auto-expand your mailbox space but you need to first enable it.
• There are chances that you may face issues like archives not appearing in Outlook, slow archive performance, permission and access issues.

So, In-Place Archive is also prone to many problems. Therefore, it is better to backup your data to a secure place. Below we have mentioned an expert preferred methods that can help you.

Final Words

If you want to use In-Place Archive, but don’t know. Read this article to the end. Here, we have explained what is In-Place Archive, its features and how you can enable In-Place Archive in Office 365. Furthermore, we also discuss the limitations of this feature and suggest an alternative solution for archiving your data.