Forum Discussion
sakhareashwin
Dec 05, 2025Copper Contributor
Need to Purge DiscoveryHolds Data from Archive Mailbox in Exchange Online
Hello Team, I am working on an Exchange Online mailbox where the archive mailbox has accumulated a large amount of data (over 335 GB) under the Recoverable Items → DiscoveryHolds folder. The mailbox...
VasilMichev
Dec 06, 2025MVP
You cannot purge items in DiscoveryHolds directly, best you can do is cleanup duplicates via:
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant user@domain.com -HoldCleanup
And you should check for org-wide holds. They will not appear under the InPlaceHolds property on the mailbox, and the fact that you have some exclusions therein does not mean that other org-wide holds are not in play. Moreover, the ComplianceTagHoldApplied property value confirms that you have at least one retention policy/label acting on the mailbox. So check via:
Get-OrganizationConfig | fl InPlaceHolds
and take the necessary actions. Refer to this article for more info: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-identify-a-hold-on-an-exchange-online-mailbox