Enabling Archiving on a Mailbox

There are few things in the world that are simpler than enabling an archive for an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox. By navigating to the user mailbox (EMC \ Recipient Configuration \ Mailbox \ select mailbox), administrators can right-click on the mailbox and select Enable Archive.

The administrator is presented with a notification that informs them that an Exchange Enterprise client access license (CAL) is required to enable the online archive and asks if they want to proceed. Clicking Yes creates and enables the archive. The archive mailbox can be created only on the same mailbox database as the primary mailbox.

Administrators can, if they want, go into the mailbox properties and select the Mailbox Settings tab and double-click Archive Quota to place a quota on the archive. The quota is enabled by selecting the Issue Warning at (MB) check box and entering the quota size. This quota, placed on the Archive Mailbox, is completely separate from any quotas placed on the primary mailbox.

When a mailbox in Exchange Server 2010 has the archive enabled, the icon associated with the mailbox changes to a white circle with a blue "i" in the middle.

Accessing the Mailbox Archive

Archived messages are of little use to the end user if they cannot access them. With an Exchange Server 2010 archive, the user can view the contents (and search through the contacts) while connected to the network with Outlook 2010 or Outlook Web App 2010. Earlier versions of Outlook and OWA (2003 and 2007) cannot access the archive mailbox. As the archive mailbox node is stored on the Exchange server, it is not accessible by offline users, even those in cached mode.

Because messages that are auto-archived retain the same folder structure in the archive that they had in the primary mailbox, users with complex folder structures are unable to maintain them, and searches can be conducted that span both the primary and archive mailbox at the same time.