A method and system for managing data can be used to provide a comprehensive solution to retaining electronic data within an enterprise. Data may come from backup tapes or a network. Email files may be separated from other files on the backup tape. Data from the email files may be extracted and fed to a collective database. The other files (from the file backup tapes) and data from the network are processed by a de-duplication engine to remove duplicates of the content while keeping metadata from each copy of the content. The content and metadata are forwarded to the collective database. Filters or other rules may be applied to the collective database to identify compliant or targeted data. Many different operations can then be performed on the compliant and targeted data.