How to Archive a SharePoint Site (+Important Considerations)

Last Updated on January 26, 2025

Want to preserve a specific site?

In this guide, let’s talk about how to archive a SharePoint Online site and what considerations to take.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents:

Disclosure: Archiving Sites Isn’t Free

Unfortunately, archiving isn’t free, as archiving sites is part of the Microsoft 365 Archive program.

This will allow you to move sites into a cold storage tier where you can maintain most of the site settings.

This includes:

An archived site won’t consume active storage quota and can’t be accessed by users, except through Purview or admin search.

But the point remains, it’s not free, and there’s a pricing model for Microsoft 365 Archive, which is pay-as-you-go.

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Before you archive a site, there are a few things you need to know to make sure important SharePoint data is preserved.

It’s quite short:

When you organize the site before archiving, it will reduce confusion later on, especially when there are unresolved issues.

After that, keep these things in mind when you archive a site:

Remember, archiving doesn’t delete the site, it simply moves it to a less active state for better organization.

Archiving a SharePoint site is a straightforward process, and is actually a little similar to deleting a site.

For this, simply go to the SharePoint Admin Center’s active sites page, and select the site you want to archive.

If the feature is active, you will then see the archive button in the command bar:

Verify your decision to “archive” the site in the right side panel, which will also show you the:

Once you archived the site, it will be moved to the “Archived sites” list:

After archiving, the site will no longer appear as active but remains accessible if needed.

Once a SharePoint site is archived, managing it effectively is important.

Here’s how you can handle archived sites:

Find archived sites in the “Archived sites” page of the Admin Center
Make sure only authorized users can access archived content
Confirm that archived sites are not using active storage quotas
For restoration, select the site and click “Reactivate” to restore it to active status

Archived sites remain intact, retaining their metadata, permissions, and structure.

If reactivated, they return to full functionality without data loss.

Do you have any questions about how to archive a SharePoint Online site? Let me know below.

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