Ok I have a request to track emails that a user is sending into my company. I can easily check over the past 30 days. But I cannot see the data beyond that due to the transaction logs being cleared after backups. Is there any way to actually recover this information from the backups? I'm thinking my only option is a full restore of the server from backups?

You are confusing two sets of logs. The transaction logs have absolutely nothing to do with message tracking, which uses the message tracking logs. You can configure message tracking to retain logs for longer than the default seven days. You should be able to restore message tracking logs if you've done a file-based backup and included them in what you're backing up. They are not backed up in an Exchange backup. Also be aware that message tracking logs are present on all Exchange servers because they're specific to the server that handles the message. Message Tracking looks in the logs of all servers to find where a message has gone. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Ochimo" wrote in message news:a7a36268-3cb8-48a9-a585-a345d3ff3044... Ok I have a request to track emails that a user is sending into my company. I can easily check over the past 30 days. But I cannot see the data beyond that due to the transaction logs being cleared after backups. Is there any way to actually recover this information from the backups? I'm thinking my only option is a full restore of the server from backups?Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Hi, Message tracking logs are kept for a maximum of 30 days or a maximum message tracking log directory size of 250MB by default. If message tracking logs are older than 30 days, they are deleted. If the message tracking log directory size exceeds 250MB, message tracking logs are deleted, even if they're less than 30 days old. If you need message tracking log files, you would need to perform a restore of the log files in the message tracking log directory. These files are not automatically backed up when you perform online backups of Exchange. You would have needed to specifically select this directory for backup in order to restore the logs. Thanks Allen

Ahh yes I see my confusion. So lets say I have done an online (streaming) backup of exchange but I also do FIle level backups of the exchange server. Would I have to recover the entire server to see the message tracking info or simply restore the log files in message tracking?

All you need for message tracking are the message tracking log files. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Ochimo" wrote in message news:142477e4-a7ba-4e87-93c6-1631919dfa8e... Ahh yes I see my confusion. So lets say I have done an online (streaming) backup of exchange but I also do FIle level backups of the exchange server. Would I have to recover the entire server to see the message tracking info or simply restore the log files in message tracking?Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."