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Upcoming changes to Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Stefanie_Bier's avatar
Stefanie_Bier
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Apr 17, 2025

Transitioning to the new unified Purview eDiscovery Experience

Today, we are announcing three significant updates to the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery products and services. These updates reinforce our commitment to meeting and exceeding the data security, privacy, and compliance requirements of our customers.

To improve security and help protect customers and their data, we have accelerated the timeline for the below changes, which will be enforced by default on May 26. The following features will be retired from the Microsoft Purview portal:

  1. Content Search will transition to the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience.
  2. The eDiscovery (Standard) classic experience will transition to the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience.
  3. The eDiscovery export PowerShell cmdlet parameters will be retired.

These updates aim to unify and simplify the eDiscovery user experience in the new Microsoft Purview Portal, while preserving the accessibility and integrity of existing eDiscovery cases.

Content Search transition to the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience

The classic eDiscovery Content Search solution will be streamlined into the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience. Effective May 26th, the Content Search solution will no longer be available in the classic Purview portal.

Content Search provides administrators with the ability to create compliance searches to investigate data located in Microsoft 365. We hear from customers that the Content Seach tool is used to investigate data privacy concerns, perform legal or incident investigations, validate data classifications, etc. Currently, each compliance search created in the Content Search tool is created outside of the boundaries of a Purview eDiscovery (Standard) case. This means that administrators in Purview Role Groups containing the Compliance Search role can view all Content Searches in their tenant. While the Content Search solution does not enable any additional search permission access, the view of all Content Searches in a customer tenant is not an ideal architecture. Alternatively, when using a Purview eDiscovery case, these administrators only have access to cases in which they are assigned.

Customers can now create their new compliance searches within an eDiscovery case using the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience. All content searches in a tenant created prior to May 26, 2025 are now accessible in the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience within a case titled “Content Search”.  Although the permissions remain consistent, eDiscovery managers and those with custom permissions will now only be able to view searches from within the eDiscovery cases in which they are assigned, including the “Content Search” case.

eDiscovery Standard transition to the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience

The classic Purview eDiscovery (Standard) solution experience has transitioned into the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience. Effective May 26th, the classic Purview eDiscovery (Standard) solution will no longer be available to customers within the classic Purview portal. All existing eDiscovery cases created in the classic purview experience are now available within the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience. 

Retirement of eDiscovery Export PowerShell Cmdlet parameters

The Export parameter within the ComplianceSearchAction eDiscovery PowerShell cmdlets will be retired on May 26, 2025:

  • New-ComplianceSearchAction -Export parameter (and parameters dependent on export such as Report, Retentionreport …)
  • Get-ComplianceSearchAction -Export parameter
  • Set-ComplianceSearchAction -ChangeExportKey parameter

We recognize that the removal of the Export parameter may require adjustments to your current workflow process when using Purview eDiscovery (Standard). The remaining Purview eDiscovery PowerShell cmdlets will continue to be supported after May 26th, 2025:

Additionally, if you have a Microsoft 365 E5 license and use eDiscovery (Premium), your organization can script all eDiscovery operations, including export, using the Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs.

Purview eDiscovery Premium

On May 26th, there will be no changes to the classic Purview eDiscovery (Premium) solution in the classic Purview portal. Cases that were created using the Purview eDiscovery (Premium) classic case experience can also now be accessed in the new unified Purview eDiscovery experience.

We recognize that these changes may impact your current processes, and we appreciate your support as we implement these updates. Microsoft runs on trust and protecting your data is our utmost priority. We believe these improvements will provide a more secure and reliable eDiscovery experience.

To learn more about the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery solution and become an eDiscovery Ninja, please check out our eDiscovery Ninja Guide at https://aka.ms/eDiscoNinja! 

Updated May 24, 2025
Version 5.0
compliance
discover and respond
ediscovery
microsoft 365
microsoft purview
privacy

23 Comments

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  • CC_Sean_W's avatar
    CC_Sean_W
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 04, 2025

    The Deduplication function has been removed.  This is a hugely regressive.  As part of a large organisation, this was a key function in identifying and obtaining a copy of relevant emails.  We could have the same email in many thousands of mailboxes.  Microsoft needs to re-instate this function.

  • danusrey's avatar
    danusrey
    Copper Contributor
    May 29, 2025

    Everything Microsoft does is supposed to make it "better." We have been using eDiscovery to backup user mailboxes, as we have a requirement by the organization to preserve the mailbox when a user leaves the company. When we first migrated to Office 365 years ago you could use the New-MailboxExportRequest to backup a mailbox to a PST file. Microsoft decided that there was an issue with that and removed the ability to do so. We were then told to use eDiscovery and now they are changing the way that works as it was not really intended for mailbox backups and like tie previous comment says we cannot delete the new cases so how do we manage this console once we have hundreds or thousands of eDiscovery cases?

  • Breaker119Exy's avatar
    Breaker119Exy
    Brass Contributor
    May 09, 2025

    While I understand the desire to control access to Content Searches similarly to how permissions are managed in eDiscovery, this new model (of just putting Content Searches into a single eDiscovery-like case) causes problems.

    Content Searches and eDiscovery have two very different purposes, and by lumping in Content Search as eDiscovery, we are now prevented from deleting old content searches and their associated review sets.

    For instance, I have 100 "new" content searches created for various unrelated matters. For 5 of them, the content has been found (the purpose of Content Search) and the topic is considered resolved. How do I now delete just those 5 resolved content searches and review sets?

     

    • DanielB425's avatar
      DanielB425
      Copper Contributor
      Jun 04, 2025

      Untested in the "new world," but something like this may work for the new Content Searches as well:

      $searchid = Get-ComplianceSearch |?{$_.runby -like "*theDude*" -AND $_.jobendtime -le ((Get-Date).AddDays(-90))}|select -ExpandProperty identity

      then

      foreach ($s in $searchid){Remove-ComplianceSearch -Identity $s}

      • phillyj05's avatar
        phillyj05
        Copper Contributor
        Jun 03, 2025

        Yes, that is the biggest issue I'm seeing. Exports for a small set of results are now taking several hours and this is without the friendly naming, etc. options selected. I used to be able to run a search on targeted mailboxes, review sample (easily modify) and export a search in under 30 minutes.