Purview retention policy not applied to Exchange mailboxes

Aaron Seet 726

We subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business Premium and for compliance reasons enable Litigation Hold on all users' mailboxes to prevent permanently deleting correspondence. Nearing end of last year I read Microsoft 365 Retention policy should be used in favour over Litigation hold (being legacy).

I created a DLM retention policy in Purview to apply org-wide (Full directory) to Exchange mailboxes retaining forever, and thought that was it.

It was only recently (way after seven days) did I realise the policy has in fact not being applied to our mailboxes. The supposed mbx policy does not how up in our mailboxes's InPlaceHolds array (empty).

What else is supposed to be done to apply retention policies?

DisplayName : icelava Name : icelava DistinguishedName : CN=icelava,OU=company.onmicrosoft.com,OU=Microsoft Exchange Hosted Organizations,DC=APC,DC=prod,DC=outlook,DC=com ExchangeGuid : GUID IsInactiveMailbox : False LitigationHoldEnabled : True LitigationHoldDuration : Unlimited LitigationHoldDate : 1 Jul 2021 16:11:28 LitigationHoldOwner : admin@company.net InPlaceHolds : {} ComplianceTagHoldApplied : False RetentionHoldEnabled : False RetentionComment : RetentionUrl : RetentionPolicy : Default MRM Policy ElcProcessingDisabled : False

Smaran Thoomu 18,965 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-03T10:18:05.91+00:00
Hi @Aaron Seet

Thank you for sharing the details regarding the issues you're facing with the retention policy in Microsoft Purview not being applied to your Exchange mailboxes. It sounds like you've taken the right steps by creating a Data Loss Management (DLM) retention policy, but there are a few additional considerations and steps you can take to troubleshoot and ensure that the policy is applied correctly.

Here are some possible causes to consider:

Ensure that the retention policy you created in Microsoft Purview is correctly assigned to the mailboxes. You can check this in the Microsoft 365 compliance center under Data lifecycle management > Retention policies. Make sure the policy is applied to the correct users or groups.

After creating or modifying a retention policy, it can take some time for the policy to be applied across all mailboxes. Typically, it can take up to 7 days for the policy to take effect. However, if it has been longer than that, you may want to check the status of the policy application.

Ensure that the mailboxes are not configured in a way that would prevent the retention policy from being applied. For example, if a mailbox is on Litigation Hold, it should not conflict with the retention policy, but it’s good to verify that there are no other settings that might interfere.

You can use PowerShell to check the retention policy applied to the mailboxes. Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell and run the following command:
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Select-Object DisplayName, RetentionPolicy
This will show you the retention policy assigned to each mailbox. Ensure that the expected policy is listed.

If the policy is not applied as expected, you can try to reassign the retention policy to the mailboxes. You can do this using PowerShell:
Set-Mailbox -Identity "user@domain.com" -RetentionPolicy "YourRetentionPolicyName"
Replace "user@domain.com" with the actual user’s email and "YourRetentionPolicyName" with the name of your retention policy.

If you have gone through these steps and the retention policy is still not being applied, consider reaching out to Microsoft Support for further assistance. They can provide more detailed insights and help troubleshoot any underlying issues.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.
Aaron Seet 726 Reputation points

2025-01-06T06:56:47.56+00:00

The policy is set to include All mailboxes. Is that not enough?

I tested another policy targeting a single specific user's mailbox and that policy GUID got applied over the weekend.
Smaran Thoomu 18,965 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-07T15:33:35.61+00:00

@Aaron Seet Following up to see if the below suggestion was helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
Alex Zhang-MSFT 3,315 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-13T01:10:25.2033333+00:00

Hello, @Aaron Seet,

Just wanted to check if the answer shared below helped. If the answer is helpful, please click on ACCEPT ANSWER as it could help other members of the Microsoft Q&A community who have similar questions and are looking for solutions.

Best Wishes,

Alex Zhang

1 answer

Vasil Michev 111.6K Reputation points MVP

2025-01-03T16:17:43.09+00:00
Org-wide policies do not show up under InPlaceHolds, this is by design. Instead, you can check them via the same property under the organizational config:

Get-OrganizationConfig | select -ExpandProperty InPlaceHolds

For more details you can refer for example to this article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-delete-items-in-the-recoverable-items-folder-of-mailboxes-on-hold?view=o365-worldwide#organization-wide-retention-policies
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Alex Zhang-MSFT 3,315 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-06T05:24:25.9666667+00:00

Hello, @Aaron Seet,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A platform!

Vasil Michev is right. Organization-wide retention policies in Microsoft 365 are not reflected in the InPlaceHolds property of mailboxes. Instead, these policies are managed and applied through the Microsoft Purview compliance portal and are designed to cover all content locations within the organization.

To verify that your organization-wide retention policy is applied, you can use the Get-OrganizationConfig cmdlet in Exchange Online PowerShell. This cmdlet provides information about organization-wide retention policies.

For more information, please refer to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-identify-a-hold-on-an-exchange-online-mailbox#get-organizationconfig.

Should you need more help on this, you can feel free to post back.

If the answer is helpful, please click on ACCEPT ANSWER as it could help other members of the Microsoft Q&A community who have similar questions and are looking for solutions.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Best Wishes,

Alex Zhang

Aaron Seet 726 Reputation points

2025-01-06T07:00:05.3466667+00:00

Yes that's the thing the OrganizationConfig InPlaceHolds has that GUID which does not show up on individual mailboxes. In that case what confidence do I have a mailbox will get converted to inactive after the user account is deleted?

Vasil Michev 111.6K Reputation points MVP

2025-01-06T08:31:17.24+00:00

If you see the GUID therein, you will be fine. You can always test it by creating a new user/mailbox and deleting it after a while.

Alex Zhang-MSFT 3,315 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-09T00:57:32.3+00:00

Hello, @Aaron Seet,

Is there any update on this thread? If the issue has been resolved, please mark the helpful replies as answers, this will make answer searching in the forum easier and be beneficial to other community members as well. Thanks for your understanding.

Best Wishes,

Alex Zhang
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