Finding content in mailboxes in eDiscovery (preview)
Admins are often charged with finding out who knew what when in the most efficient and effective way possible to respond to requests concerning ongoing or potential litigation, internal investigations, and other scenarios. These requests are often urgent, involve multiple stakeholder teams, and have significant impact if not completed in a timely manner. Knowing how to find the right information is critical for admins to complete searches successfully and help their organizations to manage the risk and cost associated with eDiscovery requirements.
Tip
Get started with Microsoft Security Copilot to explore new ways to work smarter and faster using the power of AI. Learn more about Microsoft Security Copilot in Microsoft Purview.
When an eDiscovery request is submitted, often there's only partial information available for the admin to start to collect content that may be related to a particular investigation. The request may include employee names, project titles, rough date ranges when the project was active, and not much more. From this information, the admin needs to create queries to find relevant content across Microsoft 365 services to determine the information needed for a particular project or subject. Understanding how information is stored and managed for these services help admins more efficiently find what they need quickly and in an effective manner.
Email, chat, meeting, and Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot activity data (user prompts and Copilot responses) are all stored in Exchange Online. Many communication properties are available for searching items included in Exchange Online. Some properties such as From, Sent, Subject, and To are unique to certain items and aren't relevant when searching for files or documents in SharePoint and OneDrive. Including these types of properties when searching across workloads can sometimes lead to unexpected results.
For example, to find content related to specific employees (User 1 and User 2), associated with a project called Tradewinds, and during January 2020 through January 2022, you might use a query with the following properties:
- Add User 1 and User 2's Exchange Online locations as data sources to the case
- Select User 1 and User 2's Exchange Online locations as data source.
- For Keyword, use Tradewinds
- For Date Range, use the January 1, 2020 to January 31, 2022 range
Important
For emails, when a keyword is used, we search subject, body and many properties related to the participants. However, due to recipient expansion, search may not return expected results when using the alias or part of the alias. Therefore we recommend using the full UPN.
Searchable email properties
The following table lists the email message properties that can be searched by using the eDiscovery search tools in the Microsoft Purview portal or by using the New-ComplianceSearch or the Set-ComplianceSearch cmdlet.
Important
While email messages may have other properties supported in other Microsoft 365 services, only the email properties listed in this table are supported in eDiscovery search tools. Attempting to include other email messages properties in searches isn't supported.
The table includes an example of the property:value syntax for each property and a description of the search results returned by the examples. You can enter these property:value pairs in the keywords box for an eDiscovery search.
Note
When searching email properties, it's not possible to search for message headers. Header information is not indexed for searches. Additionally, items in which the specified property is empty or blank are not searchable. For example, using the property:value pair of subject:"" to search for email messages with an empty subject line will return zero results. This also applies when searching site and contact properties.
| Property | Property description | Examples | Search results returned by the examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| AttachmentNames | The names of files attached to an email message. | attachmentnames:annualreport.ppt |
Messages that have an attached file named annualreport.ppt. In the second example, using the wildcard character ( * ) returns messages with the word annual in the file name of an attachment.1 |
| Bcc | The Bcc field of an email message.1 | bcc:pilarp@contoso.com |
All examples return messages with Pilar Pinilla included in the Bcc field. (See Recipient Expansion) |
| Category | The categories to search. Categories can be defined by users by using Outlook or Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App). The possible values are:
|
category:"Red Category" |
Messages that have been assigned the red category in the source mailboxes. |
| Cc | The Cc field of an email message.1 | cc:pilarp@contoso.com |
In both examples, messages with Pilar Pinilla specified in the Cc field. (See Recipient Expansion) |
| Folderid | The folder ID (GUID) of a specific mailbox folder in 48-character format. If you use this property, be sure to search the mailbox that the specified folder is located in. Only the specified folder is searched. Any subfolders in the folder isn't searched. To search subfolders, you need to use the Folderid property for the subfolder you want to search. For more information about searching for the Folderid property and using a script to obtain the folder IDs for a specific mailbox, see targeted searches. |
folderid:4D6DD7F943C29041A65787E30F02AD1F00000000013A0000 |
The first example returns all items in the specified mailbox folder. The second example returns all items in the specified mailbox folder that were sent or received by garthf@contoso.com. |
| From | The sender of an email message.1 | from:pilarp@contoso.com |
Messages sent by the specified user. (See Recipient Expansion) |
| HasAttachment | Indicates whether a message has an attachment. Use the values true or false. | from:pilar@contoso.com AND hasattachment:true |
Messages sent by the specified user that have attachments. |
| Importance | The importance of an email message, which a sender can specify when sending a message. By default, messages are sent with normal importance, unless the sender sets the importance as high or low. | importance:high |
Messages that are marked as high importance, medium importance, or low importance. |
| IsRead | Indicates whether messages have been read. Use the values true or false. | isread:true |
The first example returns messages with the IsRead property set to True. The second example returns messages with the IsRead property set to False. |
| ItemClass | Use this property to search specific third-party data types that your organization imported to Office 365. Use the following syntax for this property: itemclass:ipm.externaldata.<third-party data type>* |
itemclass:ipm.externaldata.Facebook* AND subject:contoso |
The first example returns Facebook items that contain the word "contoso" in the Subject property. The second example returns Twitter items that were posted by Ann Beebe and that contain the keyword phrase "Northwind Traders". |
| Kind | The type of email message to search for. Possible values: contacts docs externaldata faxes im journals meetings microsoftteams (returns items from chats, meetings, and calls in Microsoft Teams) notes posts rssfeeds tasks voicemail |
kind:email |
The first example returns email messages that meet the search criteria. The second example returns email messages, instant messaging conversations (including Skype for Business conversations and chats in Microsoft Teams), and voice messages that meet the search criteria. The third example returns items that were imported to mailboxes in Microsoft 365 from third-party data sources, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Cisco Jabber that meet the search criteria. For more information, see Archiving third-party data in Office 365. |
| Participants | All the people fields in an email message. These fields are From, To, Cc, and Bcc.1 | participants:garthf@contoso.com |
Messages sent by or sent to garthf@contoso.com. The second example returns all messages sent by or sent to a user in the contoso.com domain. (See Recipient Expansion) |
| Received | The date that an email message was received by a recipient. | received:2021-04-15 |
Messages that were received on April 15, 2021. The second example returns all messages received between January 1, 2021 and March 31, 2021. |
| Recipients | All recipient fields in an email message. These fields are To, Cc, and Bcc.1 | recipients:garthf@contoso.com |
Messages sent to garthf@contoso.com. The second example returns messages sent to any recipient in the contoso.com domain. (See Recipient Expansion) |
| Sent | The date that an email message was sent by the sender. | sent:2021-07-01 |
Messages that were sent on the specified date or sent within the specified date range. |
| Size | The size of an item, in bytes. | size>26214400 |
Messages larger than 25 MB. The second example returns messages from 1 through 1,048,567 bytes (1 MB) in size. |
| Subject | The text in the subject line of an email message. Note: When you use the Subject property in a query, the search returns all messages in which the subject line contains the text you're searching for. In other words, the query doesn't return only those messages that have an exact match. For example, if you search for |
subject:"Quarterly Financials" |
Messages that contain the phrase "Quarterly Financials" anywhere in the text of the subject line. The second example returns all messages that contain the word northwind in the subject line. |
| To | The To field of an email message.1 | to:annb@contoso.com |
All examples return messages where Ann Beebe is specified in the To: line. |
Note
1 For the value of a recipient property, you can use email address (also called user principal name (UPN)), display name, or alias to specify a user. For example, you can use annb@contoso.com, annb, or "Ann Beebe" to specify the user Ann Beebe.
Searchable sensitive data types
You can use eDiscovery search tools in the Microsoft Purview portal to search for sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or social security numbers, stored in documents in mailboxes. You can do this by using the SensitiveType property and the name (or ID) of a sensitive information type in a keyword query. For example, the query SensitiveType:"Credit Card Number" returns documents that contain a credit card number. The query SensitiveType:"U.S. Social Security Number (SSN)" returns documents that contain a U.S. social security number.
To see a list of the sensitive information types that you can search for, go to Data classifications > Sensitive info types in the Microsoft Purview portal. Or you can use the Get-DlpSensitiveInformationType cmdlet in Security & Compliance PowerShell to display a list of sensitive information types.
Recipient expansion
When searching any of the recipient properties (From, To, Cc, Bcc, Participants, and Recipients), Microsoft 365 attempts to expand the identity of each user by looking them up in Microsoft Entra ID. If the user is found in Microsoft Entra ID, the query is expanded to include the user's email address (or UPN), alias, display name, and LegacyExchangeDN. For example, a query such as participants:ronnie@contoso.com expands to participants:ronnie@contoso.com OR participants:ronnie OR participants:"Ronald Nelson" OR participants:"<LegacyExchangeDN>".
To prevent recipient expansion, add a wild card character (asterisk) to the end of the email address and use a reduced domain name; for example, participants:"ronnie@contoso*" Be sure to surround the email address with double quotation marks.
Preventing recipient expansion in the search query may result in relevant items not being returned in the search results. Email messages in Exchange can be saved with different text formats in the recipient fields. Recipient expansion is intended to help mitigate this fact by returning messages that may contain different text formats. So preventing recipient expansion may result in the search query not returning all items that may be relevant to your investigation.
Note
If you need to review or reduce the items returned by a search query due to recipient expansion, consider using premium eDiscovery features. You can search for messages (taking advantage of recipient expansion), add them to a review set, and then use review set queries or filters to review or narrow the results.
Content stored in Exchange Online mailboxes for eDiscovery
A mailbox in Exchange Online is primarily used to store email-related items such as messages, calendar items, tasks, and notes. But that's changing as more cloud-based apps also store their data in a user's mailbox. One advantage of storing data in a mailbox is that you can use the search tools in content search, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Standard), and eDiscovery (preview) to find, view, and export the data from these cloud-based apps.
The data from some of these apps is stored in hidden folders located in a non-interpersonal message (non-IPM) subtree in the mailbox. Data from other cloud-based apps might not be stored in the mailbox, but it's associated with the mailbox, and is returned in searches (if that data matches the search query). Regardless of whether cloud-based data is stored in or associated with a user mailbox, the data is typically not visible in an email client when a user opens their mailbox.
The following table lists the apps that either stores or associates data with a cloud-based mailbox. The table also describes the type of content that each app produces.
| Microsoft 365 app | Description |
|---|---|
| Forms* | Forms and responses to a form are stored in files that are attached to email messages and stored in a hidden folder in the mailbox of the user who created the form. Forms created before April 2020 are stored as a PDF file. Forms created after 2020 are stored as a JSON file. Responses to a form are stored in a CSV file. When you export content from Forms in a PST file, this data is located in the ApplicationDataRoot folder in a subfolder named with the following globally unique identified (GUID): c9a559d2-7aab-4f13-a6ed-e7e9c52aec87. |
| Microsoft 365 Groups | Email messages, calendar items, contacts (People), notes, and tasks are stored in the mailbox that's associated with a Microsoft 365 group. |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot | All Copilot activity data (user prompts and Copilot responses) generated in supported Microsoft 365 apps and services is stored in custodian mailboxes. |
| Outlook/Exchange Online | Email messages, calendar items, contacts (People), notes, and tasks are stored in a user's mailbox. |
| People | Contacts in the People app (which are the same contacts as the ones accessible in Outlook) are stored in a user's mailbox. |
| Class Schedule | Plans created in Class Schedule are stored in the mailbox of the corresponding Microsoft 365 Group that is provisioned when a new plan is created. The alias for the group mailbox is the name of the plan. |
| Skype for Business | Conversations in Skype for Business are stored in the Conversation History folder in a user's mailbox. If the mailbox of a participant of a Skype meeting is placed on Litigation Hold or assigned to a retention policy, files attached to a meeting are retained in the participants mailbox. |
| Sway* | Sways are stored as an HTML file that is attached to an email message and stored in a hidden folder in the mailbox of the user who created the sway. When you export content from Sway in a PST file, this data is located in the ApplicationDataRoot folder in a subfolder named with the following GUID: 905fcf26-4eb7-48a0-9ff0-8dcc7194b5ba. |
| Tasks | Tasks in the Tasks app (which are the same tasks as the ones accessible in Outlook) are stored in a user's mailbox. |
| Teams | Conversations that are part of a Teams channel are associated with the Teams mailbox. Conversations that are part of the Chat list in Teams (also called 1 x N chats) are associated with the mailbox of the users who participate in the chat. Also, summary information for meetings and calls in a Teams channel are associated with mailboxes of users who dialed into the meeting or call. So when searching for Teams content, you would search the Teams mailbox for content in channel conversations and search user mailboxes for content in 1 x N chats. |
| To-Do | Tasks (called to-dos, which are saved in to-do lists) in the To-Do app are stored in a user's mailbox. |
| Viva Engage | Conversations and comments within a Viva Engage community are associated with the Microsoft 365 group mailbox, as well as the user mailbox of the author and any named recipients (@ mentioned or Cc'ed users). Private messages sent outside of a Viva Engage community are stored in the mailbox of the users who participate in the private message. |
Note
* At this time, if a hold is placed on a mailbox using holds in eDiscovery (preview) cases, content from this app isn't be preserved by the hold.