Forum Discussion

Brass Contributor

Sep 05, 2020

Cannot Delete a Mailbox with Retention Policies Enabled

Dear, In my environment I have a retention policy in the Secure & Compliance center for Exchange Online mail. Now I have an service account that had a mailbox in the past, but not needed anymore ...

exchange

Retention Policy

VasilMichev

MVP

Sep 05, 2020

That's the expected behavior. If you want to just remove the mailbox without removing the underlying user object, exclude it from the retention policy. Previously it was possible to use the Disable-Mailbox cmdlet with the -IgnoreLegalHold switch, but Microsoft has since removed this functionality as detailed here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/troubleshoot/holds/ignorelegalhold-not-available

vand3rlinden
Brass Contributor
Sep 05, 2020
VasilMichevThank you for reaching out on this post 🙂

I have already tried to exclude the userobject from our retention policy, but with no luck. Even after the policy says "success" in the compliance center.
- VasilMichev
  MVP
  Sep 06, 2020
  Did you check that nothing of interest is shown under InPlaceHolds, as detailed here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/identify-a-hold-on-an-exchange-online-mailbox?view=o365-worldwide
  - vand3rlinden
    Brass Contributor
    Sep 07, 2020
    VasilMichevYes, if I run Get-mailbox -Identity domain@domain.com | Select-Object IsInactiveMailbox,LitigationHoldEnabled,LitigationHoldDuration,InPlaceHolds
    
    I get:
    IsInactiveMailbox LitigationHoldEnabled LitigationHoldDuration InPlaceHolds
    ----------------- --------------------- ---------------------- ------------
    False False Unlimited {-mbxcf82a6a479a645f7a92d53a80375b898}
    
    The -mbx guide tells me that the user object is excluded from the hold.