Forum Discussion
Retention policy and hard delete
Hello,
We have a Hybrid setup with Exchange 2013 Servers. I have created an Email Retention Policy to my O365 tenant in Security and Compliance to keep emails forever. My question is if a mailbox is hard deleted in O365 can i recover this? Since the retention policy is applied to the Mailbox i'm guessing i won't be allowed to delete this?
Thanks
10 Replies
Hey Kamran,
It sounds to me like you are trying to do what Litigation hold does through a retention policy, and they are not the same thing.
If you want to prevent users from deleting any email, you need to have E3 or higher licensing, and put those users (or all users) under litigation hold. A retention policy will just keep the mail from being removed by other means (such as an MRM) but wont protection you completely in the same way a Legal/Lit hold would.
Adam- So what is the purpose of having a retention policy and why does it have the option to keep emails for 7 years/forever?
What Adam is referring to is the "old", Exchange-style retention policies. If you have configured a retention policy via the Security and compliance center, the mailbox and any content subject to the policy will be preserved for the selected duration. In case the entire mailbox object is removed, it will still be preserved as "Inactive" mailbox. Review the documentation for more details: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/overview-of-retention-policies-5e377752-700d-4870-9b6d-12bfc12d2423
