Archive folder is automatically added to your Office 365 mailbox

An Archive folder has automatically been added to your Office 365 mailbox. At the end of December 2016, Office 365 was updated to automatically create the Archive folder upon any access to the Exchange mailbox, initial or subsequent.

Duplicate Archive1 folder

You may get the duplicate folder Archive1 in addition to the Archive folder. If newly archived email is being moved to the Archive1 folder, follow these steps in Outlook and Outlook on the Web:

1. Configure your email account to use Online Mode.
   • Click File, Account Settings, Account Settings... .
   • In the Account Settings dialog box, click your email account on the Email tab, and then click Change.
   • Click to clear the Use Cached Exchange Mode checkbox, click Next, and then click Finish.
2. Close and restart Outlook.
3. After Outlook restarts, move all content to the folder that is currently designated as the default archive folder. In this case, it is the Archive1 folder.
4. Delete the non-default folder named Archive .
5. Close Outlook.
6. Log into your Exchange Online mailbox via Outlook on the Web (http://portal.office.com).
7. In the Office 365 portal, click the Settings cog, and under Your app settings, click the Mail option.
   • Make a note of where the Mail setting link is in this menu since later you will need to navigate back to it in a different language
8. Click General, and then click Region and time zone. Change Language to something other than English.
   • Choose something easy to translate in case you can’t find your way back to these settings.
9. Once you click Save to save the new language change, go back into email and notice the folders are all in the new language.
   • If you chose Español (Mexico), note the Archive1 folder name has been renamed to Archivo.
10. Now, click on the Settings cog and navigate to the Mail options link under Your app settings again
    • Change the General, Regions and time zone, Language setting back to English (United States).
11. Start Outlook and reset your email account to use Cached Exchange Mode.

Archive folder in unexpected location

You may find your Archive folder in an unexpected location, for example, as a subfolder of Deleted Items. To move the Archive folder to the default location, follow these steps in Outlook on the Web:

1. Configure your email account to use Online Mode.
   • Click File, Account Settings, Account Settings... .
   • In the Account Settings dialog box, click your email account on the Email tab, and then click Change.
   • Click to clear the Use Cached Exchange Mode checkbox, click Next, and then click Finish.
2. Close and restart Outlook.
3. After Outlook restarts, backup the content of the folder currently designated as the default archive folder. You can do this by creating a new folder and moving the email from the Archive folder to the new folder, or by exporting the Archive folder contents to an Outlook Data File (.pst).
4. Close Outlook.
5. Log into your Exchange Online mailbox via Outlook on the Web (http://portal.office.com).
6. Click the Mail tile.
7. Navigate to the Archive folder that is in the unexpected location.
8. Delete the Archive folder.
   Important Become familiar with steps 9-11 as you must perform those steps immediately after this step.
9. In the Office 365 portal, click the Settings cog, and under Your app settings, click the Mail option.
   • Make a note of the location of the Mail setting link since you will later need to navigate back to it while the user interface is in a different language

10. Click General, and then click Region and time zone. Change Language to something other than English.

    • Choose something easy to translate in case you can’t find your way back to these settings.

11. Once you click Save to save the new language change, go back into email and notice the folders are all in the new language.

    • If you chose Español (Mexico), note the new folder Archivo has been created as a top level folder.

12. Now, click on the Settings cog and navigate to the Mail options link under Your app settings again

    • Change the General, Regions and time zone, Language setting back to English (United States). This top level folder is renamed to Archive.
13. Start Outlook and reset your email account to use Cached Exchange Mode.

The One Click Archive feature was available on the web version of Outlook in Office 365 for more than a year before the Outlook 2016 user interface was updated to show the Archive button. If an Archive folder did not exist, clicking on the Archive button in Outlook 2016 would prompt you to create the Archive folder or select an existing folder as the target folder for One Click Archive. However, with the change documented here, the folder has since been created without a prompt or any other user interaction.

For more information on the One-Click Archive feature in Outlook on the web, see New features coming to Outlook on the web.

For more information on the One-Click Archive feature in Outlook 2016, see Archive in Outlook 2016 for Windows.