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Retention tags on Deleted items folder.

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When Retention tag is applied to Deleted items folder.you would see a different behavior in which Retention tag procesess other folders and the Deleted Items folder.The retention age of mailbox items is calculated from the date of delivery,but when it comes to Deleted items folder,it works differently.

The retention age for items in the Deleted Items folder is calculated based on the date of delivery unless the item was moved or deleted from a folder that doesn't have an inherited or implicit retention tag.

The behaviour is explain in Technet article below;

How Retention Age is Calculated.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb430780(v=exchg.141).aspx

Example 1 :
• A user receives a message in the Inbox folder on 01/26/2011. The Inbox folder has a retention tag configured to delete items in 365 days.
1. The Managed Folder Assistant processes the message. It stamps the message with a start date of 01/26/2011 and an expiration date of 01/26/2012.

2. The user soft-deletes the item on 02/27/2011.The item is moved to the Deleted Items folder, which has a retention tag configured to delete the item in 30 days.

3. The Managed Folder Assistant processes the message. It recalculates the expiration date based on the start date (01/26/2011).

4. Because the item is older than 30 days, it is deleted immediately.

Example 2:
• A user receives an item in the Inbox folder on 01/26/2011. The Inbox folder doesn't have a retention tag applied, and the retention policy doesn't contain a default policy tag.
1. The user soft-deletes the item on 02/27/2011. The item is moved to the Deleted Items folder, which has a retention tag configured to delete items in 30 days.

2. The Managed Folder Assistant processes the mailbox on 03/27/2011, and determines that the item doesn't have a start date. It stamps the current date as the start date and 04/27/2011 as the expiration date.

3. The item is deleted on 04/27/2011, which is 30 days after it was deleted or moved to the Deleted Items folder.

In above Example 2,when the message is soft-deleted on 02/26/2011,the message is moved to Deleted Items folder,in  above example we see that Folder assistant process the mailbox on 03/27/2011.The question can raise is why is assistant is processing the message after one month .
This is just an example to show the Deleted Items behaviour,Ideally the message in the Deleted Item folder or any message in that matter would be processed quite faster,this depends on the ManagedFolderWorkCycle and ManagedFolderWorkCycle checkpoint.

Because of the Deleted Items folder processing behaviours,commonly faced issues are;

1) Outlook in cache mode shows the message is already expired,but Retention policy is not deleting this expired message or moving it to archive. This is because Outlook in cached mode pulls the Policy Tag information for the folder and then does the calculation for expiration itself. But if you see the same message in OWA,you would find that the message is not
yet expired. This usually happens with items in Deleted Items folder,because the way the Deleted Items folder is processed.

2) Another common issue is, where Retention policy is implemented because users have lot of items in Deleted Items folder and administrator is implementing Retention policies on Deleted Items for the first time.Therefore when the Deleted Items folder is processed for the first time,items are stamped with a Start date which is date when message was first processed,thus messages in the Deleted Items are going to be deleted after a delay.

For example,users have 1 year old emails tag on the Deleted Items folder When MFA processes items in deleted Items folder for the first time,it would not see a start date on these items so it will stamp a start date as today
and expiry date would be the date when message was first processed plus 1 year.

 

-Vikas

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Very Nice Article.. It has cleared my confusion.
  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2014
    I think its my second reading this article, my mind is much clear now as to how to calculate those 30 days in deleted items folder
  • Anonymous
    September 22, 2014
    Thank you for the clarification Vikas.
  • Anonymous
    September 23, 2014
    Thank you for the article. I think it just helped me figure out why items in the Deleted Items folder is not deleting.
  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2015
    Thank you so much Vikas
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2015
    Wats the solution for 1st issue
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2015
    @Vijay.The first issue is not a problem at all.it is how emails in the deleted items should work ideally ie based on Delvery date,
  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2015
    How am I supposed to clear out items contained within the Deleted Items folder, using a 14 day retention policy, that have been in there for 2-3 years?
  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2015
    @Disappointed,This is how deleted items tag works.
    You can either temporary clear up the Deleted items by setting the age to 1 day or use search mailbox to delete emails older than 2-3 days.any emails reaching the deleted items folder after policy is applied,will be deleted as expected.
  • Anonymous
    July 06, 2015
    Hello Vikas,

    Thank you for writing such a nice article.

    I have applied retention Tag for Deleted Items in O365 environment and after 24 hours the policy applied to the folder and I am able to see the policy under deleted Item Folder property. However i have found that all the emails in the deleted Item folders are marked in 2 category.

    1) Items will be expired on given date,
    2) Items expired

    Question: when does the expired Item will be removed from deleted Item folder.

    Thank you
    Sultan
  • Anonymous
    July 07, 2015
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2015
    Sultan ,Is your Outlook in cache mode ? Try converting into Online mode and check if you see the same results.