Understanding placeholders in Exchange Server Archiver

When you use Exchange Server Archiver to archive your mailboxes, you can choose to remove archived messages and attachments from the Exchange Server stores and replace them with placeholders.

A placeholder contains the first few lines of the message, and links to the full archived message and any attachments.

Replacing the original messages and attachments with placeholders means that the Exchange server stores are much smaller (once the databases have been defragmented). This improves system performance, and makes maintenance tasks simpler and more efficient.

It also means that there is no need for large mailbox quotas, and the temptation for users to create PST files is removed because they are unlikely to hit the maximum mailbox size.

Because the placeholders replace the original messages, the number of items in Exchange Server remains the same as it was before the messages were archived. Placeholders can be deleted from the Exchange server store in the usual way; the archived message remains intact and can be accessed if necessary using the User Archive Access Service.

When you install the Outlook® Add-in, Exchange Server Archiver provides a transparent interface for your users to access archived messages; when a user opens an archived message, Exchange Server Archiver immediately opens the original message from the archive. Users can use the Exchange Server Archiver toolbar to search the original content of archived messages as well as unarchived messages in a single search (but other search features will search only the placeholder). For more information about the Outlook Add-in, see Using the Outlook Add-in.

Note that Exchange Server Archiver also offers the option to 'Copy only' if you do not want to remove the original messages and attachments; the Copy only archive mode copies the messages and attachments to the Archive Store, but leaves the originals in the Exchange server stores. For more information about archive modes, see Archive modes.

For more information about how Exchange Server Archiver works, see the Technical Overview.

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