A journal archive targets a journal mailbox. A journal mailbox typically contains a copy of every message that leaves your outbox in Outlook. That’s messages to people inside and outside your own organization, and it’s things like meeting requests with other people (but not your own appointments, or contacts, or tasks).
So this MASSIVE journal mailbox contains a copy of every message. Usually it has meta data related to the real message. The real message is usually an attachment. This wrapper message with the meta data is called a P1 and the real message is called a P2.
Example of metadata: The P2 might be sent to DL-Sales. But 3 years later who was in that DL at the time the mail was sent? Well, the P1 will tell you, because it has the expansion of the distribution list.
A journal mailbox has everything that’s in the inbox.
Typically then, a journal archive is a flat archive (there’s no folder structure). Everything is in the inbox of the archive. Typically that’s the only folder in the entire archive.
Most customers have a handful of these journal archives. They might have rolled over to new archives periodically (eg. annually). Most customers have a ton of ordinary archives.
As with any other archive, the journal archive has an owner, but in this case it’s usually a service account. Therefore, it really means no users have access to the journal archive.
Other Names
Email archive
Journal archive