Exchange Online Retention Policies

[CharlesPearson]

I'm trying to get a handle on the retention policies in Exchange Online. We're currently in hybrid mode, and I've migrated my own mailbox up to 365.

If I look at my mailbox settings in O365, my Retention Policy shows '[No Policy]'. However, when I go to enable my archive, it warns me that it will archive all of my messages older than two years. Does this mean that the 'Default MRM' policy applying to me even though my mailbox shows that nothing is applied?

I went and removed the 'archive older than 2 years' retention tag from the Default MRM policy. However, I still get the warning that my 2-year-old messages will be archived. Why would this be?

[#2]

Where exactly are you seeing this warning? It looks to me like it might be a hard-coded message, but I don't even see it when I enable the mailbox for a test mailbox.

Generally speaking, mailboxes in O365 have a default policy applied to them as part of the mailbox plan, this might be the "Default MRM policy" or a custom one. But you can also configure a mailbox without a policy, if needed.

[#3]

@Vasil Michev 

I'm doing this within the Security and Compliance area of O365 under Information Governance -> Archive.

I never considered the mailbox plan side of things. So currently the mailbox plan on my account has retention disabled. So does that mean that my retention policy is disabled? If I enable the retention on my mailbox, does that override the mailbox plan settings?

[#4]

It's not disabled, it simply means that no plan is applied upon mailbox creation. You can assign a policy at any time.