Archive Storage

Question

Archive Storage

Steven Sands 20

What is included for Archive storage for E3, E5 and Business Premium, and what is required to increase the archive storage that is included with these licenses?

Chris Duong 10,705 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-28T22:53:55.59+00:00

Hi @Steven Sands,

I hope everything is going well on your end.

I’m following up on the support thread we've been working through together.

If you have any additional details to share or if there’s anything specific you’d like me to focus on, please feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to help if you need anything else.

Thank you again for your patience and collaboration.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

2 answers

Your answer

Chris Duong 10,705 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-28T22:53:55.59+00:00

Hi @Steven Sands,

I hope everything is going well on your end.

I’m following up on the support thread we've been working through together.

If you have any additional details to share or if there’s anything specific you’d like me to focus on, please feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to help if you need anything else.

Thank you again for your patience and collaboration.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Answer 1

Hi @Steven Sands,

I hope you’re having a great day. Thanks for your question about Archive storage in Microsoft 365.

Here’s the key information, focused on M365 E3, E5, and Business Premium:

1/ What’s included with these licenses

Online Archive (Exchange Online Archiving) is already included with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, and Business Premium, so you don’t need a separate “Exchange Online Archiving” add-on just to have an archive mailbox.

When an archive mailbox is enabled for a user, it starts with 100 GB of archive storage.

2/ How to increase the included archive storage

Microsoft does not allow admins to manually increase the archive quota. The supported way to increase archive capacity is to enable Auto-expanding archiving, which automatically adds additional archive storage up to 1.5 TB per mailbox as the archive grows.

Notes:

The user must have an archive mailbox enabled first before Auto-expanding can be enabled.
Auto-expanding archiving must be enabled via Exchange Online PowerShell (not via the Exchange admin center UI).
Once enabled, it can’t be turned off, and it may take up to 30 days for additional storage to be provisioned after thresholds are reached.

For additional information, you can refer to these articles:

I hope this information is helpful. Should you have any further questions or need additional assistance, feel free to reach out.

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Answer 2

For Exchange Online, the archive storage included with E3, E5, and Business Premium is defined by the Exchange Online Archiving/auto-expanding archiving capability rather than by the Microsoft 365 plan name itself.

Included archive storage

For mailboxes with Exchange Online Archiving/auto-expanding archiving enabled:

Each user initially receives 100 GB of storage in the archive mailbox.
When auto-expanding archiving is turned on, additional archive storage is automatically added when the 100‑GB capacity is reached.
Storage is added incrementally until the archive mailbox reaches a maximum of 1.5 TB.
Administrators cannot manually adjust this archive storage quota.

This behavior applies both to individual user mailboxes and to shared mailboxes when they are licensed appropriately for archiving.

What is required to increase archive storage

There is no manual way to “increase” the archive quota beyond what is included; the only supported method is to enable auto‑expanding archiving.
Once auto‑expanding archiving is enabled, Exchange Online automatically adds more archive storage as needed, up to 1.5 TB per archive mailbox.
Administrators cannot raise the 1.5 TB limit or directly modify archive mailbox quotas.

So for E3, E5, and Business Premium tenants, increasing archive storage is achieved by enabling auto‑expanding archiving on the mailbox; no additional archive storage SKU or manual quota change is supported beyond the built‑in 1.5 TB limit per archive mailbox.

References: