SharePoint Archiving: Options, Best Practices, and Approaches

What is SharePoint Archiving?

SharePoint archiving refers to the process of transferring less frequently accessed data to a secondary storage solution while ensuring that the content remains available when needed. This approach helps organizations manage their growing data effectively while maintaining performance, security, and compliance. Archiving can involve moving older documents to different SharePoint sites, external storage systems, or third-party archiving solutions. By doing so, businesses can optimize their SharePoint environment and prevent unnecessary storage consumption, which can impact speed and functionality.

Why Do We Need SharePoint Archiving?

As businesses evolve, their SharePoint environments accumulate vast amounts of documents, records, and data. Without a structured archiving strategy, companies may encounter multiple challenges, including:

Performance Issues: When SharePoint sites grow significantly, query execution and search functionality can slow down, leading to a degraded user experience. By archiving old content, organizations can maintain system efficiency and responsiveness.
Storage Limitations: SharePoint Online has defined storage quotas, and exceeding these limits can lead to additional costs or performance degradation. By strategically archiving infrequently used content, organizations can avoid unnecessary storage expenses.
Compliance & Retention Requirements: Industries such as healthcare, finance, and legal services have strict regulatory obligations regarding data retention. Proper archiving ensures that older records are stored securely and are easily retrievable in case of audits or legal inquiries.
Cost Management: Storing all documents within SharePoint can become expensive, especially when dealing with large file repositories. Archiving offers a cost-effective way to manage data storage while ensuring accessibility when needed.

Who Uses SharePoint Archiving?

Different departments and industries rely on SharePoint archiving to manage their data efficiently. These include:

IT Departments: Responsible for managing storage, optimizing SharePoint performance, and ensuring smooth system operations, IT teams use archiving solutions to automate data movement and retention.
Legal & Compliance Teams: Organizations with regulatory requirements, such as financial institutions and healthcare providers, need to maintain archived data for compliance purposes. Legal teams ensure that archived content remains accessible for audits and investigations.
HR & Finance Departments: These teams often deal with records that require long-term retention, such as employee records, contracts, and financial statements. Archiving helps in organizing historical data while maintaining security and accessibility.
Enterprises with Large-Scale Content: Organizations dealing with high volumes of content, such as government agencies and educational institutions, use archiving to manage information efficiently and prevent content sprawl.

What Applications Use SharePoint Archiving?

Several Microsoft and third-party applications facilitate SharePoint archiving. These include:

Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Provides built-in features for retention policies, eDiscovery, and records management, allowing organizations to archive content based on predefined rules.
Azure Blob Storage: A scalable cloud storage solution that integrates with SharePoint for long-term archival needs, reducing the burden on SharePoint Online storage.
AvePoint Cloud Archiving: A third-party tool designed to enhance SharePoint governance by automating content lifecycle management and improving compliance controls.
Metalogix Archive Manager: Helps organizations manage SharePoint content archiving by enabling automated document retention and disposal.
ShareGate: Facilitates SharePoint migration and archiving, making it easier to move old content to designated archive storage while maintaining accessibility.

Best Practices for SharePoint Archiving

Identify Archiving Needs: Conduct a thorough analysis to determine which documents or lists need archiving. Consider factors such as document age, frequency of access, regulatory requirements, and storage consumption.
Define Retention Policies: Establish policies to define how long documents should be retained before being archived. Use SharePoint retention labels and policies to automate this process based on content types and compliance needs.
Use Metadata for Organization: Applying metadata tags to documents ensures easier retrieval in the future. Use tags such as document category, department, and creation date to categorize archived content systematically.
Leverage Tiered Storage: Instead of storing everything in SharePoint, consider using external storage options such as Azure Blob Storage or AWS S3 to manage archived data efficiently. This approach helps reduce SharePoint’s storage burden while keeping data accessible when needed.
Implement Automation: Utilize tools like Power Automate to create workflows that automatically move or archive documents based on predefined rules, ensuring a streamlined and consistent archiving process.
Monitor & Review Archived Data: Regularly audit archived content to verify compliance, security, and accessibility. Ensure that data is stored securely and that retrieval processes remain efficient.

SharePoint Archiving Approaches

1. Retention Policies & Labels (Microsoft 365 Compliance Center)

Allows organizations to set automated retention and deletion rules.
Ideal for compliance-driven archiving.
Integrated with Microsoft 365 for seamless governance.

2. Moving Data to OneDrive or Teams

Suitable for archiving user-specific or departmental content.
Helps reduce SharePoint storage usage while maintaining accessibility.
Works best for internal teams that require frequent access to archived content.

3. External Storage Solutions (Azure Blob, AWS S3)

Provides scalable and cost-effective archiving options.
Requires integration with SharePoint to enable smooth data retrieval.
Best suited for large enterprises with extensive archiving needs.

4. Third-Party Archiving Solutions

Offers advanced compliance, governance, and automation features.
Requires additional licensing costs but provides enhanced functionality.
Facilitates long-term content lifecycle management.

Pros and Cons of SharePoint Archiving

Pros	Cons
Enhances SharePoint performance by reducing storage load	Can be complex to set up and manage
Reduces costs by offloading older data to external storage	Retrieval times may vary depending on the archiving solution
Improves compliance by enforcing retention policies	Additional licensing fees may be required for third-party tools
Simplifies content organization and searchability	Users may require training on how to access archived content

Use Cases & Sample Implementations

Use Case 1: Regulatory Compliance in Healthcare

A hospital must retain patient records for 10 years to meet regulatory requirements. By implementing Microsoft 365 Compliance Center policies, they ensure records are automatically archived while remaining accessible for audits.

Use Case 2: Performance Optimization for a Manufacturing Firm

A company with thousands of SharePoint sites is experiencing performance issues. Using AvePoint Cloud Archiving, they identify and migrate inactive content to an archive, improving site performance and usability.

Use Case 3: Cost Reduction for a Financial Institution

A bank wants to reduce SharePoint Online storage costs. By moving older financial reports to AWS S3, they achieve significant cost savings while ensuring that critical data remains accessible.

Comparing SharePoint Archiving Alternatives

Approach	Cost	Complexity	Compliance Readiness	Retrieval Speed
Microsoft 365 Retention Policies	Low	Easy	High	Instant
OneDrive/Teams Storage	Low	Moderate	Low	Fast
Azure Blob Storage	Medium	High	High	Moderate
Third-Party Solutions	High	Moderate	High	Fast

A well-implemented SharePoint archiving strategy enhances performance, optimizes costs, and ensures compliance. Whether utilizing built-in Microsoft 365 tools or third-party solutions, organizations must assess their needs and choose the right approach for efficient long-term content management.