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Exchange Team Blog
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How to work with Inactive Mailboxes

The_Exchange_Team's avatar
The_Exchange_Team
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 29, 2019
It usually starts with the following question: Is there a way to release the license of an Exchange Online user that left the company, but at the same time, keep the mailbox content? To get this done...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
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Tips 'n Tricks
Deleted's avatar
Deleted
Jan 29, 2019
Is there a good reason to choose Litigation Hold instead of an organization-wide retention policy? We use an automatically assigned retention policy so the first two steps are not needed and every deleted user's mailbox is accessible.
Deleted's avatar
Deleted
Jan 29, 2019
@Coert K, the answer can be found on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/create-and-manage-inactive-mailboxes:

"A mailbox becomes inactive when a Litigation Hold or an Office 365 retention policy (created in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center) is applied to the mailbox before the corresponding Office 365 user account is deleted."

It is up to you which one is most suitable for you to use. Even so, if you'll use Organization-Wide Retention policies from Security & Compliance do not exclude the double-check that you have to take, in order to ensure that the MBX in question is under the governance of that policy, and is not excluded from it.

More details about this on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/identify-a-hold-on-an-exchange-online-mailbox:

"

Excluded from an organization-wide Office 365 retention policy

-mbxe9b52bf7ab3b46a286308ecb29624696

If a mailbox is excluded from an organization-wide Office 365 retention policy, the GUID for the retention policy the mailbox is excluded from is displayed in the InPlaceHolds property and is identified by the -mbx prefix.

"