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365 Retention policy and Exchange Online deleted items folder

Copper Contributor

Hi all,

I've configured a 365 retention policy that applies to Exchange Online mailboxes and have run into some odd behaviour and was hoping you'd be able to tell me if it's by design, I'm misunderstanding how it should work, or if there is something wrong.  

 

The retention policy is configured to retain all items in an Exchange Online mailbox for 3 years based on when the item was created, and then delete the content.  The policy is scoped to a small group of test users using a static scope.

 

When applied to a test mailbox, I can see that content in the inbox and other folders is deleted and moved to the recoverable items folder as expected.  However, items that were in the deleted items folder when the policy is applied and are older than 3 years are not removed.  When viewing these items in Outlook the notification shows the items expiry as three years from when the retention policy was applied to the mailbox and not when the item was initially created. See screenshot.

 

This is the only retention policy that applied to the mailbox.

 

Any ideas why the items in the deleted items folder are not deleted by the policy?  Have I missed something?

 

Thanks.

1 Reply
best response confirmed by rw_41 (Copper Contributor)
Solution
Different rules apply to the Deleted items age calculation, as detailed for example here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/security-and-compliance/messaging-records-management/reten...
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by rw_41 (Copper Contributor)