Help please! Exchange report questions

Hard deletes are items removed from both the mailbox and the Recoverable Items folders. When a message is hard deleted, it goes to the Purges subfolder inside Recoverable Items and can still be recovered depending on the retention settings.

A hard delete usually occurs when a user empties the Deleted Items folder or permanently deletes an item with Shift+Delete. Accidental hard deletes are possible because Outlook allows Shift+Delete without confirmation.

The deletion report you're reviewing only records that an item was deleted at some point. It does not track moves between folders or restorations, so it cannot indicate whether an item is currently deleted.

Missing message IDs usually mean the action wasn’t performed on a standard email item. Calendar items, drafts, and tasks often lack traditional Internet Message IDs, so the report will show the action without an identifier. This is normal behavior and not a corruption of the report.