Microsoft 365 Archive Stores Retired SharePoint Sites

• Microsoft 365 Archive, a paid preview service, enables customers to archive and restore SharePoint Online sites quickly.
• Archived sites retain all metadata and security settings, respect data residency and retention policies, and remain available for eDiscovery searches.
• It can allow organizations to retain administrative access to SharePoint data at lower costs than paying for additional SharePoint storage.

Microsoft 365 Archive, currently in paid preview, provides archiving and reactivation of SharePoint Online sites to a lower-cost cool storage tier. It allows organizations to keep older data in SharePoint for search, compliance, and quick reactivation at lower costs than buying additional active Office 365 storage capacity, while retaining site structure, metadata, compliance policies, and eDiscovery access. The service uses a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model based on the amount of data archived beyond an organization’s SharePoint storage allocation, with additional costs for reactivating sites archived for over a week. General availability of Microsoft 365 Archive is expected in the first half of 2024.