Wait, What Happened to my Load File Export?

In the new Purview eDiscovery UI there's no option for a "condensed directory structure" export. Now what?

Photo by Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash

I’m going to be honest. I didn’t realize the option to create an export in “condensed directory structure” had been removed, as it had been a while since I last tested exported metadata that appears in a CSV file.

It wasn’t until I saw someone complaining about it on Reddit that I took a second look at the export options screen and realized it was no longer there.

In the old UI, when exporting from a Review Set:

Versus the new UI:

The obvious question then is, how do we obtain a load file with all the necessary metadata, such as Family and Parent IDs, Conversation Threads, etc.? How will I be able to collect a linked attachment that is exported to a SharePoint folder, apart from the email, and tie them back together again later?

I decided to dig into the two format options available to us.

I immediately ruled out using the option to create PSTs. I know that an email exported into a PST would need to be processed by eDiscovery software and would not maintain any connection to an existing item that was exported from a OneDrive or SharePoint connection.

Besides, I don’t have access to any eDiscovery tools, so I wouldn’t be able to test that anyway. However, in the past, this has always been an issue with PST-formatted exports. I don’t see any reason to think it has changed.

I focused on the option to create MSG files for messages.

My first concern was whether the CSV file containing metadata would be included in the export, and whether I could identify each item using that file.

Does this look familiar to anyone?

Yes, it’s a little small to read, but the report file is named Items_{Date Time Stamp}.csv, and it contains all the expected metadata. The FileID is present, along with the Family ID, ParentID, and so on.

In short, you can still obtain the load file, but the key may be using it as an overlay in a platform like Relativity.

It’s all about that File ID