In Microsoft Teams, teams are created for various needs. Over time, created teams might fall out of use. For example,
In an organization, when a project ends.
In education centers, when an academic year ends.
Those teams are no longer active. So, admins can either delete or archive those teams. Deleting teams will delete all its data like chats, files, associated site collection, etc.
Archived teams can be unarchived (i.e., reactivated) in the future. So, we recommend team archiving and postponing deletion until you are sure that it is no longer needed.
How Does Archive Work in Microsoft Teams?
You can archive a team to keep files and govern information. When a team is archived,
All its activities are frozen.
Conversations and files in the team become read-only.
However, members can be added or removed to the team to provide or restrict access.
Who can Archive Teams?
You can have any of the below roles to archive teams in Microsoft Teams.
Teams service admin
Team owner
How to Archive Team in Microsoft Teams?
Teams can be archived in many ways. Let’s see all the methods.
Follow the below steps in MS Teams. You must be a team owner to make these changes.
Select ‘Teams’ on the left to view the list of your teams
Select the ‘Manage Team’ gear icon at the bottom
In the list of teams, select a team by clicking the ‘More option’.
Select ‘Archive team’.
Archive Teams from Microsoft Teams Admin Center:
Teams admins can follow the below steps in the Teams admin center.
In the Microsoft Teams admin center, select Teams –> Manage Teams.
Select a team by clicking the team’s name
Select Archive.
Archive Teams Using PowerShell:
The above-given methods are useful for small organizations. But that is not feasible for large organizations. You can use PowerShell to archive a team or list of teams.
The PowerShell cmdlet Set-TeamArchivedState is used to set the archive in a team.
Set-TeamArchivedState –GroupId <team’s group id> -Archived:$true
To view team’s group id, you can use the Get-Team cmdlet.
Bulk Archive Teams Using PowerShell:
To archive a list of teams using CSV input, you can use the below script. It will be useful for universities or schools to archive bulk teams when an academic year ends.
$TeamNames=Import-CSV –Header “TeamName” <CSVFilePath>Foreach($TeamName in $TeamNames) { $Name=$TeamName.TeamName $ID=(Get-Team -DisplayName $Name).GroupId Write-Host Enabling archive for $Name -ForegroundColor Yellow Set-TeamArchivedState –GroupId $ID -Archived:$true | Out-Null}Write-Host Archive enabled for teams in the CSV file -ForegroundColor Green
How to Find Archived Teams?
To get all the archived teams in the Microsoft Teams, you can use the following PowerShell cmdlet.
Get-Team | where {$_.Archived -eq $true}
It will list team name, id, visibility, description, and mail nickname.
By referring to the archived teams report, you can unarchive the team anytime.
How to Unarchive Team in Microsoft Teams?
To restore an archived team in Microsoft Teams, you can use GUI or PowerShell cmdlet.
To make an archived team active, follow the below steps
In the Microsoft Teams admin center, select Teams –> Manage Teams.
Select a team by clicking the team’s name
Select Unarchive.
To reactivate the archived team using PowerShell, run the following cmdlet
Set-TeamArchivedState –GroupId <team’s group id> -Archived:$false
I hope this blog will help you in managing teams’ archives. If you have any queries or requirements, you can share them with us in the comment section.
