Microsoft 365 Advanced Audit is a capability of the Microsoft Purview audit solution that enhances auditing by adding additional high-value audit events, extended retention (up to one year by default, longer with add-ons), and intelligent insights. Microsoft documentation explains that Advanced Audit provides Exchange-specific events such as “MailItemsAccessed” and “SearchQueryInitiated”, which log when users access mailbox items and when they initiate a search in Exchange (including Outlook on the web). These records include who performed the action, when it occurred, the client/app used, and other metadata that helps investigations and forensics.

Advanced Audit is not a billing tool; billing information is handled separately in Microsoft 365 admin/billing portals and isn’t part of the audit schema. Likewise, audit logs do not expose message content; they capture activity metadata (actor, operation, workload, timestamp, and parameters) rather than the actual body of emails or file contents. The purpose is to improve auditability and investigation without revealing user content. Therefore, statements about viewing billing details or email contents are No, while identifying mailbox search actions (e.g., a user using the Outlook on the web search bar) is Yes, because Advanced Audit includes the SearchQueryInitiated (Exchange) event that records such activity.