Retention settings

[Terry Hugill]

Our O365 tenancy has a retention hold which retains Exchange data for five years. I have been asked if we can exclude certain emails from this retention policies as somebody has filed a "right to be forgotten" request. I can search and destroy the emails without issue but then it would still show in a content search. The only way I can think to do it would be to exclude the mailbox where the email was located from the retention policy, but then we'd lose all protection for that data. Is there a better way of doing it? 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Here's the place where you describe the type of retention policy configured and its settings :) Assuming it's a "keep items for xxx" type of policy applied org-wide or to specific mailboxes, you cannot exclude items from it, you have to remove the policy first. Deleting items can work as to moving them outside of user's "view" to the RecoverableItems subtree, but they will remain there for the duration of the hold. This article details how you can delete items from there: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Exchange/policy-and-compliance/recoverable-items-folder/clean-up-de...

[#3]

Thank you for confirming it, that is the document I found. I was hoping there was another way.

[#4]

@Terry HugillIn PowerShell you Can exclude message classes from the Retention thorugh the parameter

-ExcludedItemClasses. You might be able to define your own message class that signals the "Right to Forget". Users could apply this through a button.

just a rough idea...

Franck