How to clear the Discovery Holds folder

[venkatkirankona]

To find whether this discovery holds folder is completely full, use the below-mentioned command. 

Step 1: Connect-ExchangeOnline

and then,

Step 2: Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity user | select name,foldersize

Note: This DiscoveryHolds folder is having a limit of 100 GB. If it is full, we will get issues like "Unable to clear deleted items folder", "deleted items are getting auto-restored" etc.,

One of the reasons for this folder is full: If Organization Hold is turned on(All Exchange mailboxes are selected in Compliance Retention Policy) or the Individual ID is selected on Compliance Retention Policy. 

Solution: 

Please try the below-mentioned steps to overcome this issue. 

Step 1: Exclude the DiscoveryHolds full ID in the Compliance Retention policy or run the below-mentioned commands in PowerShell. 

Connect-IPPSSession

and then,

Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity "Compliance Retention Policy Name" -AddExchangeLocationException user

for multiple users, 

Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity "Compliance Retention Policy Name" -AddExchangeLocationException user1, user2, user3

Now on PowerShell, 

Connect-ExchangeOnline

and then, 

Set-Mailbox -Identity user -RetainDeletedItemsFor 0

and then run the below-mentioned command two times. 

Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity user

Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity user

After 2-3 minutes, run the below-mentioned commands. 

Get-Mailbox "user" | FL DelayHoldApplied,DelayReleaseHoldApplied

If the output is received as true for any above-mentioned holds, then run the below-mentioned commands. 

Set-Mailbox user -RemoveDelayHoldApplied
Set-Mailbox user -RemoveDelayReleaseHoldApplied

and then run the below-mentioned command two times. 

Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity user

Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity user

After 2-3 minutes, this DiscoveryHolds folder will become zero as per the below-mentioned screenshot. 

This process helped me a lot. If you have any doubts/concerns/suggestions about this post, please comment below. 

Best Regards,

Venkat Kiran Kona. 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Great post, thank you. This helped me when both RecoveryItems and DiscoveryHolds were full. We had a lot of retention policies, so using this command excluded them from all polices:

Get-RetentionCompliancePolicy | foreach {Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -identity $_.name -AddExchangeLocationException <user>}

Also, it can take a lot more than a few minutes if the mailbox has a lot of items (in my case, 100GB). It's going very slow for me, maybe 1GB every hour or two.

[#3]

Try to run this "start-managedfolder" command 2 times at once and repeat every 5 mins.

Thanks for the response btw and good to see that this is helpful.

[#4]

@venkatkirankona 

This is working perfectly! I came in this morning and the deletions had stalled, tried your method of running it twice every 5 minutes and it's dropped from 99GB to 58GB in about an hour. Here's a snippet to do this every 5 mins automatically, and report the size of the folders:

while ($true) {
    Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity <email address removed for privacy reasons>
    Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity <email address removed for privacy reasons>
    sleep 300
    Get-MailboxFolderStatistics <email address removed for privacy reasons> -FolderScope RecoverableItems | Ft Name,FolderAndSubfolderSize
    }

[#5]

This is great @koakd540. Thank you :)

[#6]

@venkatkirankona 

Hi this is something I've been looking for.

can you help me on this? i tried what you did but it doesnt work for me.

Set-Mailbox -Identity xyz -RetainDeletedItemsFor 0
Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity xyz
Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity xyz
Get-Mailbox xyz | FL DelayHoldApplied,DelayReleaseHoldApplied

>>DelayHoldApplied : False
>>DelayReleaseHoldApplied : False

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity xyz | select name,foldersize
Get-RetentionCompliancePolicy | foreach {Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -identity $_.name -AddExchangeLocationException xyz}

Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity xyz
Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity xyz

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity xyz | select name,foldersize
Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity xyz
Start-Managedfolderassistant -Identity "email address removed for privacy reasons"

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity xyz | select name,foldersize

[#7]

Thank you so much for this info. This worked for the issue we were having, my question would be how do I undo the changes to the affected mailbox? I'm talking about the settings like Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity "Compliance Retention Policy Name" -AddExchangeLocationException user and the -retaindeleteditemsfor settings.

[#8]

What is the error?

Before running these commands, you need to exclude the IDs on compliance retention policy.

[#9]

We can remove the same excluded ones by using commands else by going to the compliance portal to the "retention policy".