Forum Discussion
"outlook cannot delete one or more items because of a retention policy"
Many of our users are receiving the error message, "outlook cannot delete one or more items because of a retention policy", when attempting to delete an email message in Outlook. We do have retention labels and retention policies, but they should not prevent deletion from the inbox; rather, they just save a copy of the deleted email message to a recoverable location. This doesn't happen to every email, just a seemingly random subset.
Has anyone experienced this or know how to fix it?
Hi SeanFrazer,
This issue can be caused by a few different things, but the most common cause is a conflict between a retention policy and a retention label. To fix the issue, you can try the following:
- Check the retention policy for the inbox folder. Make sure that the policy does not prevent deletion of emails.
- Check the retention label for the email. Make sure that the label does not prevent deletion of emails.
- Try deleting the email from Outlook Web App. If you are able to delete the email from Outlook Web App, then the issue is likely caused by a problem with your Outlook client.
- Repair your Outlook installation. This can often fix problems with retention policies and retention labels.
Here are some links you can use:
- Fix Outlook cannot delete one or more items because of a retention policy error: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/message-store-full-but-cannot-delete-anything-to/a339c9f7-b5b1-486b-8a73-7d5401cadc0a
- How to remove retention policy in Outlook: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-disable-retention-policy-office-365-stellardatarecovery
- Understanding retention policies and retention labels in Outlook: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/assign-retention-labels-and-archive-policies-in-outlook-on-the-web-890bcbb3-0f0b-4771-ba5a-6ecb77729264
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Kindest regards,
Leon Pavesic
(LinkedIn)
