Is there a simple way of searching for emails in a mailstore? its for a legal investigation.. so would need to search by keywords. ive seen software that can do it, but would like to check theres not something built into exchange server that can do it for me

Have you had a look at GFI MailArchiver for Exchange?

http://www.gfi.com/mailarchiver/marfeatures.htm

Ian

OK... this has brought up a very interesting thing (lol)

Does anyone here administer a Exchange server, do you have a email retention/archiving policy? if so what do you use to archive the mail?

Ive read above something about the "sarbains oxley act" for archiving emails.. but what does it mean in english? that we need to keep every email for every employee for 7 years?? :confused:

OK... this has brought up a very interesting thing (lol)

Does anyone here administer a Exchange server' date=' do you have a email retention/archiving policy? [/quote']

Yes I do , and yes I do.

We have a copy of every mail sent and received from the mailbox store archived into a public folder (that only I have permission to access).

Once a month I extract the contents of the public folder into a .pst file which can be archived on DVD.

Comes in very handy when the temp receptionist starts sending emails to her boyfriend about wanting to sit on his face.

Oh and the sarbannes oxley thing appears to be US legislation that applies to financial matters.

http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/compliance/0,3800003180,39121223,00.htm

Yes I do ' date=' and yes I do.

We have a copy of every mail sent and received from the mailbox store archived into a public folder (that only I have permission to access).

Once a month I extract the contents of the public folder into a .pst file which can be archived on DVD.

Comes in very handy when the temp receptionist starts sending emails to her boyfriend about wanting to sit on his face.

Oh and the sarbannes oxley thing appears to be US legislation that applies to financial matters.

http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/compliance/0,3800003180,39121223,00.htm

So how long do you keep the archives for?

So how long do you keep the archives for?

They never used to keep archives before I started , but blank DVDs are dirt cheap and we'll only need 1 a month. A 240 disk wallet will keep all our archives for the next 20 years.

On a related matter have you seen that Exchange 2003 SP2 will increase the limit for a mailbox store on standard edition from 16gb to 75gb?

Very handy indeed.

They never used to keep archives before I started ' date=' but blank DVDs are dirt cheap and we'll only need 1 a month. A 240 disk wallet will keep all our archives for the next 20 years.

On a related matter have you seen that Exchange 2003 SP2 will increase the limit for a mailbox store on standard edition from 16gb to 75gb?

Very handy indeed.[/quote']

So i presume you just use the journal thing to drop a copy of sent+recived into another mailbox? - no extra software required (been looking at that GFI stuff above)

and btw how can i tell what the current size of the store is? thanks

EDIT: n/m on the size thing, ive found it.. some people are pushing 4gig mailboxes :eek:

any ideas on the searches? i can search each mailbox individually, but i could really do with searching them all at once

So i presume you just use the journal thing to drop a copy of sent+recived into another mailbox? - no extra software required (been looking at that GFI stuff above)

Yep , just right click on the mailbox store in system manager and properties , then on the general tab select "archive all messages sent or received....." and point it at a mail enabled public folder.

I then just export the contents to a file in Outlook.

and btw how can i tell what the current size of the store is? thanks

The database tab will give you the location of your .edb and .stm files for that mailbox and you can just check the file sizes in windows. If someone has just deleted a huge amount of data though the file size won't go down until you do an offline defrag of the mailbox store. Failing that it's a manual add up of all the mailbox sizes (unless there is something obvious I've missed)