IVc4 SP 16

I understand that when you archive, the master tables (item, customer, etc) are moved over automatically. Hoever, we have thousands of customers in our customer master that are no longer even remotely active, or even out of business. Is it possible to "archive" the customers as well, so that the customer would still exist inout archive database, but not in the production environment?

The master data like "customers" are only copied to the archive company.
If there is no reference from the transaction data to customer number in the live company, then you could delete the customer.
BUT, if you archive again, the "old" customer in the archive will be overwritten with the "new" customer. This is critical, e.g. at Germany, it is by law to protocol the changes of the last 10 years in the master data.
Therefore you have to find a way for documentation of this changes.

If you have more questions send me an email.