Glad you got root cause to your issue. Most of your remaining questions are either slightly off the intiial topic, not EV related but Exchange related. . .or customized to the point that I personally would not know how to answer them without a lot more specifics.

As to if the creation of the pending item and potentially safety copies and the period of time they stay there.... this depends on your configuraiton. All EV Exchange archiving create some sort of pending item at some point, It is possible to create them only while EV is archicing the item and NOT await a backup to complete. If you are waiting for backups to complete. . .this is called safety coppies and how quick it clears would depend on a) a healthy and promptly archiving EV env b) a properly configured backup c) how frequently you perform a backup and either clear the Archive attribute OR place a new trigger file down saying the content has been backed up. Naturally this would depend on when your rule executes. . .but it sounds to me that you would not be able to get away with the the pending items NOT generating some rule triggered results (like in the case of Journaling) as there is persistantly processing going on. For other functions like public folder or mbx archiving, you could have the triggers fire off lke an hour after a backup and assuming all is healthy it should clear pending prior to encountering the rule. If the rule needs to be run consistantly. . .well then that is a differnt story.

I am unfamiliar with your speacilized journaling requirements. It is possible to configure EV to do selective Journaling and not archive contnet for specific users. I would suggest posting the Exchange questions to an Exchange forum and if you need assistance with this non-standard configuration . . .hit up one of the EV partners available to you (shameless plug) like Globanet.

I hope this helps