M365 Archive (Preview) - does archiving a site reduce the site size?

Question

Hi all, I am trying to determine if M365 Archive (preview) will be beneficial for my company. I am trying to find out if archiving a SharePoint site via the M365 Archive (Preview) tool reduces the site size? I need to confirm if the site size is reduced when the site is archived. Any information or article links would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi @melissa Furnell,

Thank you for posting in this community.

Archiving a site does not reduce the size of the site itself.

When a site is archived, it goes into an explicitly colder tier, no longer consumes a tenant’s active storage quota, and instead drives Microsoft 365 Archive storage consumption. The archive storage space consumed by each site is equal to Site Storage usage of that site. So the size of the site doesn't change, just the cost of storing the archived site is reduced.

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