move emails to archive and prevent deletion

[nadsurf93]

Hi there.

We have some users who need to keep all their emails for compliance purposes so they have been put on hold.

Unfortunately, their mailboxes are nearly full.

So we want to move some emails to the archive to free up space in the primary mailbox but without deleting any email, i.e. have online archiving and litigation hold at the same time.

Unfortunately, this is not possible.

So, if anyone reading has faced the same issue, how have you tackled it?

[#2]

@nadsurf93 

I find a good comparison may helpful to you:

https://www.syscloud.com/saas-data-protection-center/microsoft-365/exchange-online-retention-policy-...

[#3]

Hi @nadsurf93,

If you disable the retention hold, ( not the litigation hold ), MRM should be able to archive all the old staff and litigation will still keep in place. 

Let me suggest to run this cmdlts: 

Get-mailbox UserMailboxName | fl *hold*

Look at the retention and litigation outputs for that account:

If RetentionHoldEnabled is true, run:

Set-Mailbox UserMailboxName -RetentionHoldEnabled $false

Then it should look like this:

Then MRM should work as expected. It will run automatically after some day, but you can force it with the cmdlt:

Start-ManagedFolderAssistant MailboxUserName

[#4]

thank you for the reply@FcoManigrasso

I will try this...

I also came across this article: https://office365itpros.com/2021/10/05/recoverable-items-cleanup/

So, it does seem that it will work.