E-Trail DA Exchange Gateway provides the user with the ability to construct aggressive email migration strategies for removing email from the email server plant to the lower cost storage of an email archive. Supported migration strategies include the age of the email (e.g. all emails more than 60 days old) or be mailbox quota based (e.g. remove the oldest emails from a mailbox until it is under its quota). Each migration strategy can be applied to a single mailbox, a collection of mailboxes (e.g. a department) or the universe of mailboxes. Each migrated email is replaced by an email “stub” on the server. These stubs are interpreted by E-Trail DA Outlook Add-in as archived emails and displayed to the user the same as any server-based email. When a user, through their Outlook client, selects an archived email, E-Trail retrieves the data from the archive and displays it to the user in its native format. This provides user-friendly, seamless integration while greatly reducing email plant operational costs. Highlights of E-Trail DA Exchange Gateway: Allows clients to define aggressive migration strategies on their Exchange or IMAP mailbox servers. Policies include email age (e.g. “delete” all emails over 45 days old) and/or email quotas (e.g. “delete” the oldest emails in a mailbox until it is under its quota) Policies can be applied to a single mailbox, a group of mailboxes or all mailboxes Emails are “stubbed” instead of deleted for seamless integration with Outlook, saving email plant upgrade costs while providing the user with the same functionality