Litigation Hold. How to recover deleted messages.

Pavel.Dyachuk 246 Reputation points
2021-03-22T11:59:52.07+00:00

Hello everyone!
I'm confused. How to recover deleted messages in exchange online mailbox with litigation hold? It seems that deleted messages must be plased to "Recoverable Items " folder, but what if my user deleted messages from this folder too?

Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online: A Microsoft email and calendaring hosted service.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
4,161 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

Accepted answer
  1. Pavel.Dyachuk 246 Reputation points
    2021-04-13T10:14:49.597+00:00

    Hi!
    Recapping:

    1. To recover deleted messages I can use Content Search, eDiscovery, Advanced eDiscovery, Recover deleted items in Admin Center. 87334-image.png
      For Advanced eDiscovery special license needed: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/overview-ediscovery-20?view=o365-worldwide#subscriptions-and-licensing

    Content search: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/use-content-search-for-targeted-collections?view=o365-worldwide
    or
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/content-search?view=o365-worldwide

    2) With "litigation hold" applied, the emails can be deleted from recoverable items folder, these emails will go in the "Purge" folder, and can be recovered with Content Search, eDiscovery, Advanced eDiscovery, Recover deleted items in Admin Center.

    3) All the deleted emails not older than 14-30 days can be recovered, even if the mailbox doesn't have the "litigation hold" enabled.

    4) If the mailbox has the "litigation hold" enabled, all the deleted emails can be recovered no matter when them where deleted.

    2 people found this answer helpful.

3 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Lucas Liu-MSFT 6,161 Reputation points
    2021-03-23T07:05:31.633+00:00

    Hi @Pavel.Dyachuk ,
    Yes, you could following the path in new Exchange Admin Center to recovering delted message: Recipients -> Mailboxes -> Select the mailbox -> More actions -> Recover deleted items.

    You could also run the following command to search for messages and restore recovered items:

    Get-RecoverableItems -Identity <> -SubjectContains <> -FilterItemType <> -FilterStartTime <> -FilterEndTime <>  
    Restore-RecoverableItems -Identity <> -FilterItemType <> -SubjectContains <> -FilterStartTime <> -FilterEndTime <> -MaxParallelSize <>  
    

    For more information you could refer to the link proivded by Andy.

    According to the following Microsoft official article we could know the difference between enabling and disabling Litigation Hold. For more information you could refer to: Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Online and In-Place Hold and Litigation Hold
    80533-image.png

    ----------

    If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

    1 person found this answer helpful.

  2. Andy David - MVP 140.8K Reputation points MVP
    2021-03-22T12:16:46.463+00:00

  3. Pavel.Dyachuk 246 Reputation points
    2021-03-22T13:49:35.423+00:00

    It seems that I can recover messages through new Exchange Admin Center. But I can do same to another mailbox without Litigation Hold. So what is the difference?
    80187-image.png