About the Export Archive wizard

Export Archive can only be used with Exchange Server mailbox archiving.

The Export Archive wizard lets you export archived items as follows:

Archives to PST files.
This is useful when the following apply:
- You want to give a user a personal copy of archived items, perhaps to use when out of the office.
- You want to send individual mailbox archives somewhere for safekeeping.
Archives to their original mailboxes.
This is useful when the following apply:
- You are transferring mailboxes and want to send the users' archived items too.
- You have been running a pilot installation of Enterprise Vault and now want to copy everything that has been archived back to the original mailboxes.
A single archive to a chosen mailbox.
This could be useful when the following apply:
- A person takes over an existing role within the company. For example, You could export to the new mailbox everything that was archived from the old mailbox with a particular retention category.
- There is a legal investigation. You may want to copy everything that has been archived from a particular mailbox to a new mailbox, ready for subsequent investigation.

You can export only the items that have been archived from mailboxes, and not the items archived from public folders or SharePoint workspaces.

When you export, you can filter the output by date and by retention category. For example, you can export items less than a year old that were archived with a particular retention category.

When you export to PST files, the wizard lets you control the maximum size of the output files. The default maximum of 600 MB is ideal for writing to CD. If a file reaches the maximum size, the wizard automatically creates a numbered sequence of files, none of which exceeds the maximum size.

Folders in PST files can contain a maximum of 16,383 items. This is a PST file limitation. If a folder reaches this limit the Export Archive wizard automatically creates a new folder of the same name but with a number suffix. For example, if folder 'Inbox' is full, the Export Archive wizard automatically creates 'Inbox 1' to hold further items.

For each PST file, the wizard creates a configuration file that you may need if you intend to import the PST file contents back into Enterprise Vault. You can import files that have been exported, so it is possible to move someone's archived items to another Enterprise Vault system.