A site nobody has opened in two years is still billed at the same per-GB rate as one your busiest team edits daily. Deleting it feels risky, since someone might need it later; leaving it exactly as is quietly wastes budget every month. Microsoft 365 Archive gives a third option: move the whole site to a colder, lower-cost tier without losing anything.
What archiving a site actually does
Site-level archiving takes an entire SharePoint site, not just an individual file, and moves it out of the active storage tier into cold storage. The site's files, lists, libraries, permissions, and metadata are preserved exactly as they were, and it stops counting against your active SharePoint storage quota. What changes is accessibility: nobody can open the site until an administrator reactivates it, although search and eDiscovery still find its content.
This is a different mechanism from file-level archiving, where individual files inside an otherwise-active site can be archived and reactivated on demand by anyone with read access to them. Site-level archiving is the right tool when the entire site, not just a handful of files, has gone genuinely quiet.
Before you archive: which sites qualify
Not every quiet-looking site is actually safe to archive. Three checks are worth running before touching anything:
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Last activity date across the whole site, not just the home page | A site can look abandoned at the top level while a single library still gets weekly edits |
| Whether the site backs a live Teams connection | Only the SharePoint site is archived, so an active team loses its files. A team with private or shared channels cannot be archived from the admin center at all |
| Any pending compliance hold or legal review | Holds and retention keep applying to an archived site, but whoever owns the review should agree before users lose access to the content |
Identifying inactive SharePoint sites tenant-wide, rather than relying on individual owners to self-report, gives a much more reliable shortlist than asking around.
Step-by-step: archiving the site
- Confirm the prerequisite. Microsoft 365 Archive must be enabled for the tenant, with a pay-as-you-go billing policy linked to an Azure subscription to cover any archive charges. This is a one-time tenant-level setup.
- Shortlist candidate sites. Pull a tenant-wide inactivity and storage report so the decision is based on real usage data rather than guesswork.
- Notify the site owner. Even a genuinely dormant site usually has a nominal owner. A short heads-up before the change avoids a confused support ticket later.
- Archive the site. A SharePoint Administrator goes to Active sites in the SharePoint admin center, selects the site, and chooses Archive. The
Set-SPOSiteArchiveStatePowerShell cmdlet does the same. Hub sites have to be unregistered as hubs first. - Confirm the site shows as archived. It moves to the Archived sites page in the admin center. Users can no longer open it.
See Report Master's storage reports
Reactivating an archived site
Reactivation is initiated by an administrator, not by end users browsing to the site. In the first seven days after archiving it is instant. After that the site is in the Archived state, reactivation can take up to 24 hours, and the admin center shows an estimated reactivation charge before you confirm. Plan any request that depends on a reactivated site with that lag in mind, particularly if it's tied to a deadline.
Once reactivated, the site returns to its prior state: same permissions, same content, same version history. Two things keep moving while it is archived: recycle bin items still expire, and retention policies still delete what they were set to delete. Files that were archived individually before the site was archived stay archived and need reactivating on their own.
How this differs from deleting or trimming
Archiving, deleting, and version trimming solve three different problems, and mixing them up leads to the wrong outcome.
- Archiving keeps everything, reduces cost, removes active access. Best for sites that are done being used but might still be needed for reference.
- Deleting (via empty folder removal or full site deletion) permanently removes content. Best for sites genuinely finished and not required for retention.
- Version trimming reduces the historical bloat inside an otherwise active site without touching accessibility at all. See how to trim SharePoint version history for that separate problem.
For sites your organisation is deciding whether to keep at all, SharePoint site archive vs. delete: making the call walks through the decision itself in more depth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does archiving a SharePoint site delete its content?
No. Everything is preserved exactly as it was. Archiving only changes the storage tier and accessibility, not the content itself.
Can users access an archived SharePoint site at all?
No. Nobody can open an archived site until an administrator reactivates it, although search and eDiscovery still find its content. That is a different behaviour to file-level archiving, where individual files stay visible and anyone with read access can reactivate them.
Does archiving reduce the site's storage quota consumption?
Yes. An archived site stops consuming the tenant's active SharePoint storage quota and counts as Microsoft 365 Archive storage instead, which is charged at a lower per-GB rate and only when active and archived storage together exceed your allowance. The figure in the admin center can take a while to update.