Forum Discussion
Retention policy and hard delete
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
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
- Thanks Vasil, i thought this might be case.
How can i test this? Since our setup is Hybrid i have to delete the AD Object on-premises, wait for AAD to sync and remove the Object from Office 365 which then will soft delete the mailbox. If i then initiate hard-delete how do i recover the mailbox?Hey Karam,
I would do your testing with test data, as to be sure you dont lose anything. Also remember you need to give the retention policy a good 24 hours to be sure its in place.
If this functions like the litigation/legal hold, a deleted mailbox that was being preserved will show up as an inactive mailbox. You just follow the restore process:Hope this helps!
Adam
