office 365 exchange in the cloud backups / email restores

does this apply to a folder being deleted within a mailbox?? eg if I deleted a sub foldeer within an inbox ? or a contact within contacts etc???

It is important to understand that in Office 365 single item recovery is your (the admin) responsibility. Microsoft will not help you with restoring a single message, entire deleted folder, etc. Here's a quick overview of the process:

http://help.outlook.com/en-ca/140/hh125820.aspx

If you have some legal requirements to keep messages, you should enable journaling/in-place hold.

It is important to understand that in Office 365 single item recovery is your (the admin) responsibility

That's Totally WRONG.

Deleted item recovery is enabled for ALL users to be able to recover any item that has been emptied from the recycle bin.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps-help/recover-deleted-messages-or-items-in-outlook-web-app-HA104104897.aspx

Standard users can access anything deleted within the last 14-days.  Admin users, by default, can access items up to 30-days old.

All of this can be modified as you wish:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2714467

Jeff

Care to read the original post next time before criticizing answers? He asked how to recover PERMANENTLY DELETED ITEMS and my answer covers that part. The link I provided includes information about the options available BOTH to users and the admins.

Ok, the problem is that In-Place Hold is not available for Small Business Plans.  So, the things you linked to cannot be used in this case.

Jeff

thank you for your responses so far we now have the live exchange office 365 small business package so we are going to give this a test and get back to you thank you

Please be aware that you cannot use the In-Place Hold with that plan.

Jeff

what plan would we need to be able to use the in-place hold function please?

The standalone Exchange Online Plan 2, or any of the plans that include it (E3, E4).

thank you