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Retention Policy not being applied

Rayner, June 65 Reputation points
2024-07-29T14:35:31.89+00:00

I have a policy that I set up in Microsoft Purview to delete email messages older than one month. I've applied it to a single Exchange mailbox. After a week, the policy still hasn't deleted the messages that I expected to be deleted. I don't see any errors with the policy. What could be preventing the retention policy from taking effect?

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Accepted answer
  1. Jake Zhang-MSFT 8,400 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2024-07-31T01:44:13.1933333+00:00

    Hi @Rayner, June,

    Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A platform!

    According to your description,there could be several reasons why your retention policy isn't taking effect as expected. Here are a few things to check:

    1. Retention policies can take up to 14 days to become effective after being applied. Since it’s only been a week, it might just need a bit more time.
    2. If the mailbox is under a Litigation Hold or In-Place Hold, these can override the retention policy. You can check for holds using the following PowerShell command: 
         Get-Mailbox <username> | FL LitigationHoldEnabled,InPlaceHolds
    3. The Managed Folder Assistant processes mailboxes to apply retention policies. You can manually trigger it to run for the specific mailbox using this command: 
         Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity user@contoso.com
    4. If there are multiple retention policies that apply to the same mailbox, there could be conflicts, and the priorities of these policies could affect their application. Check the policy priority settings to ensure your desired policy is set up correctly.

    Please feel free to contact me if you have any queries.

    Best,

    Jake Zhang

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