Comparison between the Teams archive and Teams compliance archive jobs
Introduction
The Teams archive and Teams compliance archive jobs both archive the content of Microsoft Teams, but they serve different purposes and behave differently in several key areas. This page compares the two jobs to help administrators understand their similarities and differences and choose the appropriate job for a given scenario.
The most important distinction is that the Teams compliance archive job is a backup solution designed specifically for archiving deleted messages (and deleted channels) and their content within Microsoft Teams.
Important: If a team has already been archived using the Teams archive job, it is not possible to re-archive it using the Teams compliance archive job, and vice versa. Attempting to do so will result in an error, and the job will not process anything.
Feature comparison
The table below summarizes the points of similarity and dissimilarity between the Teams archive job and the Teams compliance archive job.
| Features and functions | Teams archive job | Teams compliance archive job |
|---|---|---|
| Report mode | Report mode is enabled. | Report mode is disabled. |
| Filtering settings | You can filter the messages, channels, and files to archive. | Filtering settings are disabled. |
| Process all data/selected data | It is possible to select what to archive: all or selected data. | Does not provide the option to select specific items for processing; instead, it archives all data at once. |
| Convert archived files to shortcut | This option is enabled. | This option is disabled. |
| Delete archived files | This option is enabled. | This option is disabled. |
| Archive all or selected teams | This option is enabled. | This option is enabled. |
| Archive deleted messages (and channels) | Returns an empty body for deleted messages when archiving a team where some messages were deleted before the archiving process. | By its nature, archives deleted messages and deleted channels. |
| Archive hosted contents | This option is enabled. | This option is enabled. |
| Archive deleted hosted contents | Returns an empty body for deleted hosted contents. | Known limitation: cannot archive hosted contents in deleted messages. |
| Archive messages from Private or Shared channels | This function is enabled. | Known limitation: messages from Private or Shared channels will not be archived. |