Retention Policy is not working.

Question

Hello

Please i need your help on this issue.

A retention policy was set up to move 3months old emails to archive.

First we created a Tag.

Then after i created a policy and choose the Tag

Then i went to the user mailbox in Exchange admin center 

For 3days nothing happened.

I dont know if we did it correctly. Or is there another way to do this through PowerShell

Answer 1

Hi，@John Peter

I understand you have a concern regarding retention policy not working as expected. To fully understand the scenario, based on the information you have shared with us I can see that you created an MRM retention policy called "Personal 3 months move to archive" that has one personal retention tag called "personal 3 months move to archive"

for the policy to start applying on the mailbox, the policy will have to be assigned to the mailbox in the exchange admin center, based on the screenshot you share it seems the part to confirm the policy assigned to the mailbox is missing. You can verify the policy "Personal 3 months move to archive" is selected

As the retention policy uses a personal retention policy tag, the personal retention policy tag will have to be manually applied on the items within the outlook client applications for the emails to move to archive. By default, personal tags are not applied to any folder or email. if you would like to move emails in the inbox folder that are 3 months older you can open outlook and right click on the inbox folder then select properties and in policy tab sect the personal retention tag to apply the tag on the folder.

If you would like to apply the policy on the to all folders of the mailbox, you can use a default retention tag in the policy. retention tag with ty default applies to entire mailbox.

For more information on the type of the MRM retention policy you can check the following article: Retention tags and retention policies in Exchange Online | Microsoft Learn

For the retention policy to move the emails quicker you can run the following PowerShell command to force starting managed folder assistance, the managed folder assistant is a service that moves emails that were flagged by the MRM retention policies to be moved, by default it runs at least once in the seven days

Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity "user_email_address"

Start-ManagedFolderAssistant (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn

You can also manage Retention Policy (MRM) in Exchange Online using PowerShell, the following are steps you can use

Step 1: Connect to Exchange Online

Set-ExecutionPolicy remotesigned

Install-module ExchangeOnlineManagement

Import-module ExchangeOnlineManagement

Connect-ExchangeOnline

Step 2: Create a Retention Tag

New-RetentionPolicyTag -Name "MyRetentionTag" -Type All -RetentionEnabled $true -AgeLimitForRetention 365 -RetentionAction DeleteAndAllowRecovery

Step 3: Create a Retention Policy

New-RetentionPolicy -Name "MyRetentionPolicy" -RetentionPolicyTagLinks "MyRetentionTag"

Step 4: Apply the Retention Policy to Mailboxes, please note that this command applies the retention policy to all mailbox in the organization

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Set-Mailbox -RetentionPolicy "MyRetentionPolicy"

Step 5: Verify the Policy

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Select-Object DisplayName,RetentionPolicy

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Hi，@John Peter

I am glad to hear from you.

Please checking the retention hold, there is an additional hold called ELCprocessing. See below:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/security-and-compliance/messaging-records-management/mailbox-retention-hold

Please ensure that the ELC processing is "False" for either the Mailbox, or the entire Organization as per the below:

Set-OrganizationConfig -ElcProcessingDisabled $false

Set-Mailbox –Identity <user email> –ElcProcessingDisable $false