Cannot delete a soft deleted, UserPolicy Applied

[Steve_Moss]

Hi,

I have a group of mailboxes that I need to hard delete. At this point, the user accounts are gone (hard deleted), but when I run remove-mailbox,

Remove-Mailbox <mailbox ID> -PermanentlyDelete -Force

the error lists several kinds of holds (reformatted)

LitigationHoldEnabled: false,
ComplianceTagHoldApplied: false,
DelayHoldApplied: false,
DelayReleaseHoldApplied: false,
OrganizationPolicies Applied: ,
UserPolicies Applied: 7833ebcf-a961-42b2-b38a-1498a7dd20ec,
e79e7a87-aecc-49c4-837f-f7e9a47e9206,
80c5fbb5-7153-4984-bedb-e28073176bb3,
c7afe8ba-1df4-4d86-9c00-3e8c8834789e
restrictivePolicies Applied: ,
CpsInfo: .

Am I correct in assuming that UserPolicies is where the problem lies and if so, how do I clear that so I can make that mailbox go away forever.

Thanks

[#2]

Yes, most likely. Refer to this article on how to locate the policy in question: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/delete-items-in-the-recoverable-items-fold...

[#3]

@Vasil Michev Thank you, this helped me understand the problem a little better.

The Guid that is returned for the 4 mailboxes I want to delete is for a Retention Policy that is scoped to several individual mailboxes. The 4 mailboxes were part of it at one point, but are not anymore.

Unfortunately, there are still some other mailboxes that are legitimately part of the same Retention policy, so I it looks like I can't simply delete the policy.

However, The mailboxes that need to be kept are also part of ediscovery holds.  If I understand correctly, if I did delete the retention policy, the Mailboxes that need to be kept would still be preserved because of the eDiscovery Hold.

With the Retention hold removed, I can then delete the mailboxes that should be deleted. 

Do I understand correctly?

Thanks (I hope this was clear)

[#4]

If they are on any type of hold, including the eDiscovery one, you won't be able to delete them. You can however delete the corresponding user object to make the mailbox "inactive": https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/create-and-manage-inactive-mailboxes?view=...
If the user was already deleted/mailbox is inactive, then you need to remove any and all holds, which will trigger the removal process as detailed here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/delete-an-inactive-mailbox?view=o365-world...

[#5]

Thanks, I will look at those. Sorry to be repetitive, but if a mailbox has 2 holds on it and you remove 1 hold, the other is not affect and remains in force?

Thanks

[#6 · Accepted solution]

Yes, that's right.