How to manually force the Online Archive process on Microsoft 365?
1- Make sure the account has the archive feature enabled and the correct Retention Policy is assigned.
2- Open a PowerShell as Administrator.
3- Proceed with the installation of the Exchange Online Management module.
3.1- Command: Install-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
3.2- If it returns and error that says something like this: ....cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system..... Use the following command to enable the scripts execution.
3.3- Command to verify the execution of scripts status: Get-ExecutionPolicy
3.4- It should return: Restricted
3.5- Command change the execution of scripts status: Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
3.6- Run the: Get-ExecutionPolicy command again, it should return Unrestricted.
4- Run again the command: Install-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
5- Once it complete the process, run the following commands:
5.1- Import-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
5.2- Connect-ExchangeOnline
5.3- The process will prompt for login on Microsoft 365 with global admin account.
6- Once the login was completed use the following command to force the Online Archive process to run:
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity <user_email_address>
Replace the <user_email_address> with the user email account.
7- The process will take a little while to start, but will do it eventually. You will see the size of the main mailbox decreasing and the archive mailbox size increasing. (See Mailbox archive and Main Mailbox attachments)