Key Takeaways
- Every version of Outlook has an Archive button on the toolbar, and pressing Backspace archives whatever message is currently selected.
- Archived messages are moved to the Outlook Archive folder, which stays inside your mailbox and counts toward your storage quota.
- Since archiving does not free up space, you have to delete messages or move them out of the mailbox entirely to achieve that goal.
- Outlook on the web only selects messages that have loaded on screen, so archiving thousands of emails means repeating the same steps over and over.
- Clean Email archives emails in Outlook by date or sender in one action, and it does so without rules or manual selection.
How to Archive Emails in Outlook on Any Platform
The steps to archive emails in Outlook barely differ between different versions of the email client. What does change is where the button sits and what it's called on each platform, which is where most confusion comes from when people switch between the desktop app and the web version. Here's where to find it in each one.
New Outlook for Windows and Mac
- Select one or more messages in your inbox.
- Click Archive on the toolbar.
Classic Outlook for Windows
- Select the messages you want to move.
- Click Archive in the Delete group of the Home tab.
In both desktop versions and on the web, pressing Backspace archives the selected messages too. Classic Outlook is also the only version with AutoArchive, which moves old items to a .pst file on a schedule. That feature has its own quirks, so we cover it separately in our guide to Outlook auto archive. New Outlook dropped it entirely.
Outlook on the web
- Tick the checkbox next to each message.
- Click Archive on the command bar above the message list.
On mobile
The Outlook app for iOS and Android archives on swipe by default, which is the same gesture you'd use to archive email on iPhone in Apple Mail.
You can also select multiple emails in your inbox and archive them, just as you can on desktop or the web.
⚠️ Important: Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com accounts come with a built-in Archive folder that can't be renamed or removed. POP and IMAP accounts ask you to pick or create one the first time you archive a message.
💡 Good to know: Archived messages also have a habit of disappearing right when you need them. If some have gone missing on you, here's how to find archived emails in Outlook.
Bulk Archiving Scenarios Outlook Can't Handle
The steps above are fine if your goal is to archive only a handful of messages. Unfortunately, they stop being practical once a mailbox holds years of accumulated mail, and the complaints on Reddit's r/Outlook show where people get stuck. Let us show you how to archive Outlook messages far more efficiently in four common situations where the built-in features from Microsoft are simply not enough.
Archive thousands of old emails at once
You inherit a work mailbox with tens of thousands of messages going back years into the past. Desktop Outlook at least lets you press Ctrl+A inside a folder or entire Inbox.
Outlook on the web can also select the entire Inbox with Ctrl+A , but once everything is selected, the Archive button becomes unavailable. And neither version offers anything like "archive everything older than two years."
Most people searching for how to archive all emails in Outlook quickly realize that a complete cleanup using only native features would take an absurd amount of time. In Clean Email, the job takes three steps:
- Connect your Outlook mailbox.
- Sort or filter any folder by date to group the old mail together.
- Select the whole group and click Archive.
The action applies to every message in the group, whether that's 300 or 30,000.
Archive everything from one sender
Automated notifications from some website you don't care about anymore or an old newsletter you no longer read can easily pollute your inbox with hundreds or even thousands of messages.
Native Outlook gives you two equally bad options on how to deal with them. You can select everything by hand, or you can create a permanent rule you'll have to remember and maintain.
Clean Email groups mail by sender automatically, so you can just choose the sender, click Archive, and the full history of the sender's messages is archived in one go (no rule gets created unless you decide you want one).
Archive mail older than 30 days
Outlook rules mostly trigger on fixed dates, not relative age, so "archive anything once it turns a month old" is a request that not all versions of Outlook can accomplish, which is why so many people online keep asking for it year after year and getting the same answer.
If you want to archive messages in Outlook that are older than a certain specific age, then Clean Email's Auto Clean feature is your best bet thanks to its support for rolling conditions like message age.
💡 Our Outlook auto archive guide walks through the whole setup, which takes about a minute.
The mailbox is still full after archiving
So many people go through the pain of archiving everything that should be archived only to find out that Outlook still reports their mailbox as full. If you've read this article from the start, you know that this is annoying but entirely expected. Archiving and deletion are two separate operations in Outlook.
Clean Email understands that sometimes freeing up inbox storage space is the most important thing, so it provides Cleaning Suggestions that point out groups of old messages you almost certainly no longer need.
Acting on a suggestion takes one click, and there's no digging through the mailbox first to figure out what's safe to remove.
You can also sort any folder by size to bring the largest messages to the top and obtain the most amount of storage space for the least amount of effort.
Does archiving free up space in Outlook?
No. Microsoft's documentation says clearly that moving messages with the Archive button doesn't reduce mailbox size because the Archive folder counts toward the same quota. Deleting the archived messages is what reclaims storage, and our comparison of archive vs delete in Outlook explains when each makes sense.
📌 Note: If your organization requires you to keep old messages, Microsoft 365 enterprise plans include Online Archive, a separate mailbox that doesn't count against your regular quota. That said, companies with formal retention obligations usually outgrow that quickly and move to dedicated email archiving solutions.
FAQs
How do I archive multiple emails in Outlook at once?
In the desktop apps, press Ctrl+A to select a folder's contents, or click the first message and Shift-click the last, then press Archive. Outlook on the web limits archiving, even though you can select the entire Inbox, the Archive action becomes unavailable. To archive Outlook emails in large batches, Clean Email processes entire date or sender groups in one go.
Why do my emails get archived by themselves in Outlook?
It's very likely that you pressed Backspace while the message list had focus, since that shortcut archives the selected message (an accidental swipe does the same on mobile). The good news is that desktop Outlook lets you turn off Backspace archiving in its settings, and the mobile app lets you reassign swipe gestures.
Does archiving emails free up space in Outlook?
It doesn't. The Archive folder is part of your mailbox, so its contents count toward your quota. Storage comes back when you delete messages and empty Deleted Items, or when you move mail out of the mailbox for good.
Can Outlook archive emails automatically?
Classic Outlook can, through AutoArchive. New Outlook and the web app don't include that feature. Clean Email's Auto Clean covers every version. Archiving works much the same way in Gmail, Yahoo, and other services, by the way (see our overview of how to archive emails anywhere).
