It’s been a long time coming.. Earlier this year it was announced that Exchange 2010 online archive support for Outlook 2007 would be coming. The good news is that it is finally here!

The December 2010 Cumulative Update for Office 2007 will allow users with Outlook 2007 to access their Exchange 2010 online archives. Organizations with Outlook 2007 deployed can now benefit from Exchange 2010 archiving and retention. There are a few BUT’s though.. the following functionality is not supported in Outlook 2007:

• Search across primary and archive mailboxes: When a user searches the primary mailbox, and selects All Mailbox Items, Outlook does not search the archive mailbox. Similarly, when the user searches the archive mailbox, the primary mailbox is not searched.
• Archive policies: In Outlook 2007, users can't use personal tags (also known as archive policies) to move items to the archive mailbox. Any default archive policies for the mailbox continue to be applied. Users can use Outlook Web App to see or apply archive policies. Archive policies are retention policy tags with the Move to Archive action. Organizations can use the Default Archive and Retention Policy, or apply custom retention policies to a mailbox. The policies can include a default policy tag (DPT) to move items from the primary mailbox to the archive mailbox, and personal tags which users can apply to messages or folders to move them to archive.