Usage

Search your archive for older mail (in development)

Ordinary backup keeps points in time you can restore from, but it is not built for reaching back years into your mail history. See Backup vs. archive for why the two are deliberately different systems. Once this feature ships, the plan is that you will be able to search your own mail history directly, far beyond normal backup retention (for example everything older than 365 days, older than 2 years, or older than 10 years), and then either:

• restore a message you find back into your mailbox, the same non-destructive way described in First steps → Restore, or
• download it as an .eml file.

You would only ever see your own mail this way, the same way Restore only ever shows your own accounts today. This is still in development. Archiving itself ships with 0.1.0 for administrators; searching your own archive yourself is the part that is still in development. See Archiving for its full design and current status, or Archive and journaling for the technical detail. Not every mailbox is necessarily planned to be archived: your administrator will be able to choose, per mailbox, whether it is only backed up or also archived, so whether your own mail ends up in the archive at all will depend on that choice once it ships. This page will describe the feature as available only once it actually ships, not before.

Privacy

Browsing your own mailbox in Restow is yours to do; an administrator can open your data only through a logged, auditable path, never by silently looking over your shoulder. Acting on your data on your behalf (for example to restore something if you have left the organization or lost access) requires a stated reason, and every such action (who did it, when, what it covered, on whose behalf, and from which IP address) is written to a tamper-evident audit log (a hash chain with daily anchors, so a change is detected, not prevented). Restoring your data is not the same as browsing it silently, and neither happens without leaving a trace.

You cannot see that audit log yourself; your organization’s Restow administrator can review it if the organization has the audit log viewer (Business and Service Provider editions). If you believe someone accessed your data who should not have, that is who to ask.

FAQ

Short, specific questions, for example whether a restore can overwrite what you already have, or why archive search is not available yet, are answered on their own page: Frequently asked questions.

Getting help

Restow itself has no separate end-user support desk: for anything you cannot resolve from these pages (a missing backup, a failed restore, a question about what your organization protects, or a suspicion that something is wrong), contact your organization’s Restow administrator. They can see backup status and restore history for your account, and the audit log where the viewer is available, and they are the only ones who can change what Restow protects or how.