Forum Discussion
Retention and archive policies in exchange
I also have a similar issue and I don't think it is resolved by the replies so far. I would like to apply a deletion policy of all email over 2 years old unless they have been flagged with a retention policy for longer. My understanding is that retention takes priority over deletion so this should be possible. In the WIndows client you can flag the mails or folders with a label that marks the emails for retention - I would like my users to go through and flag everything they need to retain before i do a big central deletion purge. BUT... I can't find anywhere to set labels on the Mac client - Is it possible or is the only answer to push them in to OWA. Any help would be gratefully received.
Thanks
Andrew
The rules of retention are that an explicit tag always takes precedence over an implicit. In this context, the default tag in a mailbox retention is implicit because it applies if no other tag controls an item. So, you can have a default tag to remove items after two years and that will clean up your mailbox as you want. To get the explicit retention, you apply folder retention tags or personal tags. Folder tags can be assigned to default folders like the Inbox, Sent Items, etc. Personal tags (which could have a much longer retention period) an be assigned to any item or folder. You can certainly do this with OWA or Outlook for Windows by applying a policy to an item or folder. I need to check an Outlook for Mac client.
I had a look at Outlook for Mac and couldn't find a way to apply a personal tag, which is what you want to do.
My suggestion is that you create and assign retention policies to the mailboxes and then ask users to log in with OWA to mark the items they want to keep with personal tags. The easiest way for them to do this is to create folders and assign the tags to the folders. Any items placed in the folders will inherit the personal tag and be retained for the desired period. The default tag in the policy will then clean up items in any other folder once they reach two years old.