Audience: End-Users
The title introduces today’s topic very well on its own, so let’s get right into it!
What is Microsoft 365 Archive?
Microsoft 365 Archive is a way to archive SharePoint content by moving it into a cold storage tier. It is commonly used for two reasons, including reducing your organization’s active storage consumption and saving on storage costs.
Sidebar: How does cold storage work? (click to expand)
Think of the leftover food in your freezer. You want to keep it, but you’re not eating it tonight, and probably not anytime soon. Cold storage works the same. It holds data you need to keep but don’t use day-to-day. And getting it back takes a little longer. Just like thawing.
When Microsoft 365 Archive first launched, it only worked at the site level. You could archive an entire SharePoint site, but nothing smaller. That was great for retired project sites, but you couldn’t have a mix of active files and old ones sitting next to each other in a document library.
That is, until now!
Microsoft 365 Archive went to public preview for file-level archiving back in March 2026 and is rolling out general availability this month, July 2026.
This is a very exciting expansion of the tool, and I’ve tested it out. For the purpose of today’s read, we’ll be reviewing archiving at the file level in SharePoint. Let’s walk through it together.
Prerequisites
Before anyone can archive a file, there’s some admin setup involved: your IT admin must set up a pay-as-you-go Azure subscription and enable Microsoft 365 Archive in the admin center.
What about cost? Archived storage is charged only after your tenant’s total storage (i.e., active storage + archive storage) exceeds its quota. If your organization is under its storage limit, archiving files won’t cost anything.
As an end user, you typically don’t need to worry about this, but if you need more details on the prerequisites and billing, see Microsoft’s official documentation.
Once the billing and admin prerequisites are complete, anyone with edit access to a SharePoint site can archive files within that site. Anyone with read permissions can reactivate archived files.
How it Works
Archiving a File
To archive a file, navigate to the SharePoint file on the web, locate the file that you want to archive, click the ellipses (⋯), and select Archive.
Pretty simple, right? The file stays visible in your document library and an icon shows up near the file name as an indicator that it has been archived.
One thing to note is that, as of when I tested this, archiving is manual.
I would love to see Microsoft release more features for file-level archiving in the future, such as bulk archiving with PowerShell or Power Automate, but at this time, there’s no bulk-select option.
If you have a batch of files to archive, here’s my suggestion: toss them all into one folder and select archive on the folder. Archiving files within a folder takes a bit longer than archiving a single file (mine took about 13 minutes for a folder with 3 files), but SharePoint will email you once it’s complete.
Reactivating an Archived File
Once you’re ready to view and/or use the file again, click the ellipses (⋯) and select Reactivate. Then you can open and work with the file as normal.
Another thing to note is that files can be reactivated immediately for the first 7 days following its archival. After day 7, file reactivations can take up to 24 hours to complete.
My FAQs
I had a couple of questions when I first heard about the development of file-level archiving. Here’s what I found:
- Can I open a file once it’s archived? Nope. An archived file must be reactivated before you can open it. If you try to open it, you’ll get a message that the file is archived.
- Can archived files be found in search? Yes, actually! There’s an “Archived” filter on the site’s search results page, so archived files are still discoverable in search.
- How does archiving affect Copilot responses? Archived files are removed from Copilot’s index, so Copilot won’t reference them in its responses.
- What happens to sharing links? Sharing links don’t work while a file is archived. Once you reactivate the file, the same link works again. You also can’t create a new sharing link to a file while it’s archived.
- What about metadata and version history? Metadata remains visible while the file is archived, but version history isn’t viewable until you reactivate. Once reactivated, the full version history is right back where you left it.
- Can I still move, copy, or rename an archived file? Yes to all three. Just know that copying an archived file will create a new archived file.
- Are there limits I should know about? Each site maxes out at 500,000 archive or reactivation actions per day. And certain item types can’t be archived with M365 archive, including OneNote notebooks, SharePoint pages, and SharePoint agents.
Let me know what questions you still have about file-level archiving with Microsoft 365 in the comments. See you in the next blog post!
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