Search for my archived email

The Email Archiving add-on preserves, protects, and retrieves your organization's most sensitive communications. To search your archived email, you need a Microsoft 365 plan with Email Archiving.

There are 3 ways you can search for archived email. If you're not sure where to start, we recommending creating a list. You can search for email based on specific keywords or users. If you're looking for a more specific type of message and need to add more conditions or criteria, try a simple or advanced search. Select a link to jump to its section:

• Create a list
• Create a new simple search
• Create a new advanced search

Create a list

If there are common terms or addresses that need to be used for repetitive or multiple searches, create a Keyword list or User list. This can help save time and prevent you from having to recreate a previously made search. Once a list is created, it can be modified, but it can't be deleted.

1. Sign in to Email Archiving.
2. At the upper-right of the page, select the settings icon.
3. Select Manage.
4. Select New, and then choose the type of list you want to create.
   • Keyword: Choose this list for frequently used search terms.
   • User: Choose this list to search for frequently used email addresses.
5. Enter a List name.
6. Enter your Content, which are your search criteria separated by commas.
• To broaden your search results, add an asterisk when searching for partial terms (for example, *@coolexample.com).
7. Select Save.

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Create a new simple search

A simple search is the easiest way to run a search with basic criteria. Search for terms or text in emails and/or attachments with as many conditions as needed.

1. Sign in to Email Archiving.
2. On the leftmost side, select Searches.
3. Select New (or Create Search if this is your first search).
4. Under New Search, select the Simple tab for a default search.
5. Select a previously-created list. Or customize your search by entering keywords, dates and other email details.
• If you want to search using phrases, add quotations around your keywords (for example, “Timecard update”).
• To broaden your search results, you can use an asterisk when searching for partial terms (for example, *@coolexample.com).
  
6. Select Search.
7. Select Save to keep your search for later.
Note: Simple searches execute a search for all listed criteria. Multiple terms within the same fields search for any of the terms. For example, the search above is looking for the keywords “confidential” or “privileged” with the list “list name” and on June 5th.

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Create a new advanced search

Advanced search uses the full power of our cloud-search engine and can be used to create more complex search queries that aren't available in simple search. You can exclude search terms while including other terms, specify date/time queries, and narrow down your search considerably.

1. Sign in to Email Archiving.
2. On the leftmost side, select Searches.
3. Select New (or Create Search if this is your first search).
4. Under New Search, select the Advanced tab to fully customize your search.
5. If you want to add a single criterion, select Add Criteria. Or, if you want to add multiple criteria for your search, select Add Group.
6. Select Add Criteria again, and then choose the type of criterion you want to add to the search. You'll be asked to fill in additional information about your selected criterion.
Note: There are several ways to customize your criteria. A few examples include:
• To include or exclude specified criterion in your search, select is or is not.
• To search for phrases or groups of words, add quotation marks (for example, “Timecard update”).
• To broaden your search results, you can add an asterisk when searching for partial terms (for example, *@coolexample.com).
• For a keyword criterion, you can toggle between and/or next to each term.
  
7. Select Search.
8. To keep your search for later, select Save.

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Related step

• Run a saved search to send, download, or export archived content.
• Edit my Email Archiving searches

More info

• Add previous emails to Email Archiving
• Manually create local backup files on Outlook.