[SOLVED]: Office 365 Online Archive Pending

Today, I’m going to show you how to solve the Office 365 online archive pending issue.

We’re running Exchange 2016 on-premises as well as a Microsoft 365 solution, and we have Microsoft Entra Connect fully configured and working. We want to use Exchange archiving to archive older mailbox content in Microsoft 365, so I have set up and completed the Exchange hybrid setup wizard. I then made sure that my own user account and a few test users had the appropriate Microsoft 365 license required for archiving and then enabled the online archive mailbox for a few users using the command below in Exchange Management Shell.

Enable-RemoteMailbox “User123” -Archive

However, after almost a week of waiting, they are stuck in the same state where the archive is not visible. Running “get-mailbox” on one of the mailboxes reveals that the ArchiveStatus and ArchiveState are “None” in cloud.

Looking at the mailbox archive settings from Exchange 2016, the ArchiveState state is “Hosted pending” and ArchiveStatus is None.

So my question is, how do I troubleshoot this issue?

• Access Windows or Exchange server.
• Go to the “Active Directory Administrative Center”
• Search for the user and double click on the account to open it.

• Next, click extensions and select attribute editor.
• Check the value of msExchArchiveStatus.

• The msExchArchiveStatus for the mailbox was “Not set.” It should be 1 so change it and see if it makes a difference.

I confirm that after updating the msExchArchiveStatus status to “1” on the affected mailbox, the archive became visible in Exchange 2016. Allow a few hours for these changes to reflect in Microsoft 365.

Now, Microsoft 365 shows the ArchiveStatus as Active and ArchiveState as Local.

The issue could be caused by Microsoft Entra Connect. I would like to confirm if you select hybrid mode when setting up the Microsoft Entra wizard as the attribute msExchArchiveStatus should be synced back to on-premises. If the sync fails, it may be caused by many factors, such as the network. Moreover, please remember to run full sync. If the issue persists, the quick solution is to set the msExchArchiveStatus to 1.

For a single mailbox, you can use Enable-RemoteMailbox “User123” -Archive

In addition, ArchiveGUID in on-premises and Microsoft 365 should match. To check, use Get-RemoteMailbox “user123” | fl Archiveg*

Replace RemoteMailbox with mailbox and execute the cmdlet in Exchange Online PowerShell.

If they don’t match, you need to set the on-premises GUID to match the cloud one.

Set-RemoteMailbox “User123” -ArchiveGUID “CloudArchiveGuid”

If the steps above don’t work for whatever reason, enable the online archive using the security and compliance center or Exchange admin center.

Exchange Admin Center

You can use the Exchange admin center in the Microsoft 365 admin center to enable the online archive on user mailboxes. There is no need to wait for a sync.

• Go to “Exchange Admin Center.“
• Select “Recipients“ and select “Mailboxes.“
• Search the mailbox and open it.
• Click “Others” and select “Manage mailbox archive.”

• Toggle the button to “On” and click save.

• Wait for 15 minutes for replication.

Microsoft Purview compliance portal

We have another option to enable the archive in Microsoft 365, which is, Microsoft Purview compliance portal. Similar to the Exchange Admin Center, this option does not require synchronization.

• Go to the “Microsoft Purview compliance portal.”
• In the left pane of the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, click Data lifecycle management, and then click the Archive tab.
• In the list of mailboxes, select the user that you want to enable the archive mailbox for and select Enable Archive.
• Search for the user and click Enable on the right.

For more information about cloud-based online archiving, check out the Microsoft website.

That’s how I solved the Office 365 Online archive pending issue.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Did I miss anything? Or maybe you have a question about something that I covered.

Either way, I’d like to hear from you. So go ahead and leave a comment below.