Question
How does the Office 365 retention policy work?
Answer
Under the default retention policy in UC Davis Office 365, mail in all folders will remain there permanently unless specific retention policies are created by the mailbox owner. No messages will be deleted, even those in the Deleted Items folder. If a message is manually hard deleted or emptied from the Deleted Items folder, that mail will remain in a Recover Deleted Items* folder for another 14 days before being permanently purged.
To read more about retention policies in Office 365 click the following link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn775046(v=exchg.150).aspx
* To access your Recover Deleted Items folder right-click the Deleted Items folder in Outlook 2010, 2013 or on the web and select Recover Deleted Items.
How do I change the default retention policy for an Office 365 mailbox as an OU administrator?
- Log into the Office 365 ECP, https://outlook.office365.com/ecp, with an account that has departmental admin privileges.
- Click on Recipients and search for your user.
- Open the properties of your user.
- Click on the Mailbox Features tab on the left.
- Select the Retention Policy drop down.
- You should be able to select Default MRM Policy or No Policy.
Or in Powershell
Set-oMailbox <Identity> –RetentionPolicy <Policy Name>
Right now our policies are: MRM Policy or No Policy
If requested, the uConnect team can also apply retention across Home Department Codes security groups in Active Directory.
What is an Archive Mailbox?
Archive mailboxes for Office 365 are available from the uConnect team upon request. An archive mailbox exists alongside the primary mailbox and can store up to 100GB. Enabling an archive applies a default retention policy that will start auto-archiving all mail two years old and beyond, though custom policies can be defined by the mailbox owner.
To read more about Archive Mailboxes click the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/policy-and-compliance/in-place-archiving/in-place-archiving?view=exchserver-2019