About Enterprise Vault

Enterprise Vault automatically moves emails and their attachments from the folders in your Outlook mailbox to an online storage area that is called a vault. This process is called archiving. Enterprise Vault runs automatically and usually performs archiving at off-peak times.

After Enterprise Vault archives emails, they remain available to you in Outlook in the following ways:

Most administrators set up Enterprise Vault so that there is a shortcut in your mailbox to each archived email. A shortcut replaces the email in the mailbox folder and provides instant access to the archived email. The shortcut has the following special icon in the Outlook item list:

A shortcut looks like the original email and behaves in a similar way. For example, you can open an email from its shortcut, forward and reply to the email, and copy or move it to another folder. Your administrator can configure Enterprise Vault so that shortcuts expire after a certain time. An expired shortcut disappears from the mailbox, but the archived item is still in your vault.
If your administrator has enabled it, Outlook displays your vault as a Virtual Vault in the Navigation Pane.

The administrator can set up Enterprise Vault so that it archives Outlook items other than emails. If so, you may see archived Outlook calendar items, tasks, contacts, or notes in your Virtual Vault in the appropriate folder view.

Although archiving is automatic, you can choose to store items in the vault yourself at any time. When you store an item, Enterprise Vault adds it to your vault as an archived item. Enterprise Vault treats the items that you have stored in the same way as any other archived item.

You can also choose to restore archived items; that is, to move or copy archived items back into your mailbox in their original format. You do not need to restore archived items to forward them or reply to them, or to perform other actions.

Enterprise Vault does not normally archive any information that is held in your personal folder (PST) files on your computer. However, your administrator can archive these items for you. Contact your administrator if you have items in any personal folder files that need to be archived.