How Enterprise Vault selects items to archive

Enterprise Vault selects items to archive from your mailbox in one or both of the following ways:

Age of item. Enterprise Vault archives items automatically as soon as they reach the specified age.

The age of a mail message is taken from the date you received it or sent it. The age of a document is taken from the date when it was last modified.
Mailbox size. Enterprise Vault archives the oldest items in your mailbox until the mailbox contains a certain percentage of free space.

When both of these strategies apply, Enterprise Vault performs age-based archiving first. If age-based archiving does not free enough space in your mailbox, Enterprise Vault archives more items until the required percentage of space is free.

Archiving by age and archiving by percentage of mailbox size limit are the main strategies for selection of items to archive. The administrator may also have configured Enterprise Vault so that it archives large items first. Archiving large items first operates in addition to the main archiving strategy. Archiving large items first has the advantage that mailbox space is recovered by archiving relatively few items.

The administrator can lock the setting that controls the archiving strategy so that you cannot change it.