---
title: "Office 365 Outlook Email Search has Limitations | DuoCircle"
description: "Microsoft Office 365 Outlook is a cloud-based solution compare to traditional hosted mail."
image: "https://www.duocircle.com/images/og-default.png"
canonical: "https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/"
---

Quick Answer

Office 365 Outlook search covers basics like journaling, litigation hold, in-place hold, and retention duration, but stops short of full e-discovery and legacy archive coverage. Many organizations also keep non-Office 365 archives, which Outlook search can't reach. DuoCircle Email Archiving augments Outlook by adding an independent, immutable, geo-distributed cloud archive: direct Office 365 integration, granular litigation hold and e-discovery, perpetual retention including deleted messages, fast search and restore from any device, a single web-based admin console for retention and compliance requests, and chain-of-custody auditing. The archive remains searchable when Office 365 is offline, which doubles as a recovery path during planned or unplanned downtime.

Share 

[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=undefined%2Fblog%2Femail-hosting%2Foffice-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations%2F "Share on LinkedIn") [ ](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Office%20365%20Outlook%20Email%20Search%20has%20Limitations&url=undefined%2Fblog%2Femail-hosting%2Foffice-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations%2F "Share on X/Twitter") [ ](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=undefined%2Fblog%2Femail-hosting%2Foffice-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations%2F "Share on Facebook") [ ](https://reddit.com/submit?url=undefined%2Fblog%2Femail-hosting%2Foffice-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations%2F&title=Office%20365%20Outlook%20Email%20Search%20has%20Limitations "Share on Reddit") [ ](mailto:?subject=Office%20365%20Outlook%20Email%20Search%20has%20Limitations&body=Check out this article: undefined%2Fblog%2Femail-hosting%2Foffice-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations%2F "Share via Email") 

![Office 365 Outlook Email](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2018/07/dmarc-report-2010.jpg) 

**Microsoft Office 365 Outlook is a cloud-based solution compare to traditional hosted mail, and while it provides many benefits over traditional on-site solutions, it fails to provide sufficient tools to meet the stringent legal compliance requirements that many organizations now face.**

Office 365 does provide for the basic functionality quite well: journaling, litigation and in-place hold and the ability to manage retention duration policies compare to your own email hosting. But more and more organizations find themselves needing more than that. An enterprise email hosting must provide all of the above, and more: it must handle e-discovery and compliance requests.

Many organizations also maintain legacy (non Office 365) email archives as well. In these cases, Outlook email search can only partially cover the needs of the the organization as it attempts to comply with regulatory requirements.

### DuoCircle Augments Outlook Email Search

_Email Archiving from DuoCircle extends the capabilities of Outlook email search by providing and independent, immutable, and verifiable backup of archived email data, together with tools that enable users to search and retrieve email and admins to easily manage retention policies and regulatory requests._

By storing email from multiple archives in a single resilient and scalable cloud-based archive instead of hosted mail, DuoCircle’s solution provides a secure and unified repository for all of an organization’s legacy and current email. The integrity of the data is always secured through a combination of compliance-driven chains of custody and multiple copies of data house in geographically dispersed data centers.

### DuoCircle Enterprise Information Archiving Provides:

- Seamless integration with Microsoft Office 365, offering a full suite of tools for Outlook email search and retention policy management.
- Reliable auditing and strong chains of custody for each message, providing actionable evidence when needed.
- Litigation hold and e-discovery policies can be set at a granular level, allowing administrators full control over the process of identifying and retrieving data.
- Availability of data for litigation and compliance request fulfilment, ensured by perpetual retention of email data, including deleted messages.
- Blindingly fast search and retrieval, meaning that users can perform an Outlook email search of their archived data and retrieve and restore deleted emails.
- The ability for users to access data from any device, any time, anywhere, through innovative and intuitive interface, without the need to call the help desk or request IT department support.
- A unified web-based administration console, enabling admins to manage archive retention policies, e-discovery, and compliance requests quickly and more efficiently, and lowering the total cost of ownership over traditional on-site archiving solutions.

[![ cloud-based archives](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2018/07/dkim-selector-3236.jpg)](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2018/07/dkim-selector-3236.jpg)

_DuoCircle cloud-based archives are searchable even when Office 365 is offline due to planned downtime or an unforeseen event. This means that even when the Outlook servers are down, users can still search and retrieve information and restore deleted email. The ability to do this may also speed Outlook disaster recovery within your organization._

DuoCircle offers a world-class Outlook [email search and recovery solution](/email/why-archiving/#search).

![Brad Slavin](https://media.mailhop.org/dmarcreport/images/team/brad-slavin.jpg) 

Brad Slavin 

General Manager

General Manager at DuoCircle. Product strategy and commercial lead across the email security portfolio.

## Secure your email infrastructure

Protect, authenticate, and deliver. Contact our team to find the right solution.

[Contact Sales](/contact/) [Explore Products](/products/) 

## Related Articles

[  Email Hosting 18m  10 Steps To Set Up A Self-Hosted Mail Server Without Hitting Spam  Mar 10, 2026 ](/blog/email-hosting/10-steps-set-up-self-hosted-mail-server-avoid-spam/)[  Email Hosting 5m  The 9 Ways You Benefit from Moving Mail to the Cloud  Apr 13, 2016 ](/blog/email-hosting/9-ways-benefit-moving-mail-cloud/)[  Email Hosting 1m  Amazon Order Confirmation Trojan  Feb 16, 2019 ](/blog/email-hosting/amazon-order-confirmation-trojan/)[  Email Hosting 6m  Apache Log4j Zero-day Vulnerability: How to Detect it & Precautions You Need to Take  Dec 24, 2021 ](/blog/email-hosting/apache-log4j-zero-day-vulnerability-how-to-detect-it-precautions-you-need-to-take/)

```json
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/images/duocircle-logo.png"},"description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. Trusted by 50,000+ organizations since 2014.","subOrganization":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138898167","name":"DMARC Report","url":"https://dmarcreport.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897474","name":"AutoSPF","url":"https://autospf.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897912","name":"Phish Protection","url":"https://www.phishprotection.com"}],"sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/company/duocircle","https://x.com/duocirclellc","https://www.facebook.com/duocirclellc","https://www.g2.com/products/phish-protection-by-duocircle/reviews","https://github.com/duocircle","https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duocircle-llc"],"contactPoint":{"@type":"ContactPoint","contactType":"customer support","url":"https://support.duocircle.com"},"knowsAbout":["Email Security","Email Authentication","SPF","DKIM","DMARC","Phishing Protection","Spam Filtering","SMTP Relay","Email Deliverability","Email Forwarding"]}
```

```json
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebSite","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. Trusted by 50,000+ organizations since 2014.","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/images/duocircle-logo.png"},"description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. Trusted by 50,000+ organizations since 2014.","subOrganization":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138898167","name":"DMARC Report","url":"https://dmarcreport.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897474","name":"AutoSPF","url":"https://autospf.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897912","name":"Phish Protection","url":"https://www.phishprotection.com"}]}}
```

```json
[{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"Office 365 Outlook Email Search has Limitations","description":"Microsoft Office 365 Outlook is a cloud-based solution compare to traditional hosted mail.","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/","datePublished":"2018-07-11T15:23:07.000Z","dateModified":"2025-05-08T18:01:02.000Z","dateCreated":"2018-07-11T15:23:07.000Z","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https://www.duocircle.com/authors/brad-slavin/#person","name":"Brad Slavin","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/authors/brad-slavin/","jobTitle":"General Manager","description":"Brad Slavin runs DuoCircle, the company behind DMARC Report, AutoSPF, Phish Protection, and Mailhop. His focus is product strategy, customer relationships, and the commercial and compliance side of email authentication (DPAs, SLAs, enterprise procurement).","image":"https://media.mailhop.org/dmarcreport/images/team/brad-slavin.jpg","knowsAbout":["Email Security Strategy","SaaS Product Management","Enterprise Compliance","Customer Success","Email Deliverability Business"],"worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com"},"sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradslavin"]},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/images/duocircle-logo.png"},"description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. Trusted by 50,000+ organizations since 2014.","subOrganization":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138898167","name":"DMARC Report","url":"https://dmarcreport.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897474","name":"AutoSPF","url":"https://autospf.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897912","name":"Phish Protection","url":"https://www.phishprotection.com"}]},"mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/"},"articleSection":"email-hosting","keywords":"","wordCount":481,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2018/07/dmarc-report-2010.jpg","caption":"Office 365 Outlook Email","width":900,"height":600},"speakable":{"@type":"SpeakableSpecification","cssSelector":[".answer-block","h1"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Blog","item":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Email Hosting"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Office 365 Outlook Email Search has Limitations","item":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/"}]}]
```

```json
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://www.duocircle.com/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blog","item":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Email Hosting","item":"https://www.duocircle.comundefined"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"Office 365 Outlook Email Search has Limitations","item":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/"}]}
```

```json
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"Office 365 Outlook Email Search has Limitations","description":"Microsoft Office 365 Outlook is a cloud-based solution compare to traditional hosted mail.","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/","datePublished":"2018-07-11T15:23:07.000Z","dateModified":"2025-05-08T18:01:02.000Z","dateCreated":"2018-07-11T15:23:07.000Z","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https://www.duocircle.com/authors/brad-slavin/#person","name":"Brad Slavin","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/authors/brad-slavin/","jobTitle":"General Manager","description":"Brad Slavin runs DuoCircle, the company behind DMARC Report, AutoSPF, Phish Protection, and Mailhop. His focus is product strategy, customer relationships, and the commercial and compliance side of email authentication (DPAs, SLAs, enterprise procurement).","image":"https://media.mailhop.org/dmarcreport/images/team/brad-slavin.jpg","knowsAbout":["Email Security Strategy","SaaS Product Management","Enterprise Compliance","Customer Success","Email Deliverability Business"],"worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com"},"sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradslavin"]},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/images/duocircle-logo.png"},"description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. Trusted by 50,000+ organizations since 2014.","subOrganization":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138898167","name":"DMARC Report","url":"https://dmarcreport.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897474","name":"AutoSPF","url":"https://autospf.com"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138897912","name":"Phish Protection","url":"https://www.phishprotection.com"}]},"mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.duocircle.com/blog/email-hosting/office-365-outlook-email-search-has-limitations/"},"articleSection":"email-hosting","keywords":"","wordCount":481,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2018/07/dmarc-report-2010.jpg","caption":"Office 365 Outlook Email","width":900,"height":600},"speakable":{"@type":"SpeakableSpecification","cssSelector":[".answer-block","h1"]}}
```