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Hi
I've activated my Online Archive on my Exchange Online Account.
On my main Root Folder in Outlook, I added a 1 year move to archive policy.
After, I run the process manually with powershell. All items in inbox and sent folder, have been moved to the Online Archive.
But no items in my deleted folder have been moved there.
I also applied a 31days retention policy, but nothing happende, also not after some days.
Is there a way to check why this is not working on deleted items?
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Hi @Righter
Is there any update? Do suggestions below help and do you have any other concern?
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Deleted items have it's own retention processing, because of few factors. First, and most important, few years back Microsoft decided to push a change that "ignores" the default tag or folder-specific Deleted Items tags, as apparently they needed to please people switching from Gmail. Anyway, if you want items in the Deleted items folder to be processed, you need to create a new policy with an appropriate tag assigned, or rename the default one. Details are here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2015/02/20/extended-email-retention-deleted-items-office-365/
If the items remain in the Deleted items folder in your main mailbox, that's the most probable cause. For completeness, let's also mention the other factor. The usual "path" items in the Deleted items follow is: Deleted items folder > item expires or is soft-deleted > Deletions folder > item expires or is hard-deleted > Purges. If you have an Online archive enabled, the default policy then moves items from the Purges folder to the corresponding folder in the Online Archive, where they remain for the duration of the "single item recovery" period. Just recently Microsoft "shortened" the amount of time over which this process happens: https://www.michev.info/Blog/Post/3457/updated-retention-settings-for-the-recoverable-items-subtree
Ok as I understood correct.
I have deployed a new Policy instead of using the default.
I added also a new tag to identify my outlook is using the new one.
The new policy is, with the new 3 month to archive
And I've added this policy to my mailbox yesterday evening:
But this morning, my Outlook (after restart also) Still doesn't show the new policy with the three months. So I think it still has the old policy in outlook.
Do I have to wait longer until the policy is pushed to Outlook (Same in OWA)
That's a "personal" tag, it won't be applied automatically, you have to stamp it on the folder or individual items as needed. Also, as it is a personal tag, you might need to "select" it first from OWA settings (https://outlook.office.com/mail/options/mail/retentionPolicies > Add new policy). Make sure it's selected therein, then it will appear in Outlook too and you can stamp it on the folder.
Another thing to mention is that if you want to stamp it on the folder, you should do so from the folder proprties dialog, otherwise you might just stamp the selected item instead. But that's easy to remedy.
The remarks above were around the "Deleted items" folder-specific retention tag as part of the default policy, if you create a new policy and add the same tag to it, it should work. Although if you want the action to be "move to archive", a folder-specific tag wont work anyway, so you did the right thing with creating a personal tag. Just make sure it's selected/stamped on the folder.
Thanks a lot for your explanation. That one with the new 3-month policy is now working, to use it in outlook.
Now I'll check again if its working now also with deleted items.
@Vasil Michev
It still does not work on the deleted folder.
I have applied the 3 month move to archive on my root folder of the mailbox and run the MFA process. -> no success on deleted but works on sent items
After that I changed the policy to 1 year archive especially on the deleted folders and run the MFA process -> still all objects are in the deleted folder.
I've checked ELCLastSuccessTimestamp and it was run successfully after each change.
Any idea what still wrong?
Could it maybe be from our migration?
We have migrated 2 weeks ago to exchange online, and have imported all our objects with a PST Import Tool from Exchange Online
Give it some time, processing is not immediate. If the new tag is available and stamped on the folder, it's just a matter of waiting a bit.
And how long should I wait?
2 Days later, deleted items are still not processed?
There's a 7-day workcycle for MRM processing in Exchange Online, you can try and give it some push via the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant cmdlet, but that only "signals" the service to process the mailbox as soon as there are available resources, which can still take time. Apart from that you can check the logs again, apart from the last timestamp they contain information on the number of items processed, etc. If items have been processed already, you should see the retention tooltip when selecting an item in Outlook/OWA (open the message in new window).
Hi I tried the start-managedfolderasssistant, and also I see it runt successfully:
Last run was about 3 hours ago
I also don't see a tooltip.
I can tag a single message in deleted folders with the never delete policy -> I see the tooltip
I tag another message there with the 90day archive policy -> no tooltip
I just changed my folder policy from one year to 3 months, run the process by kicking it with powershell.
All folders have benn processed, except deleted
I think my applied policy just got ignored
Name Value
ElcAssistantLock 0
ElcLastRunTotalProcessingTime 1588852
ElcLastRunSubAssistantProcessingTime 1588401
ElcLastRunUpdatedFolderCount 51
ElcLastRunTaggedFolderCount 0
ElcLastRunUpdatedItemCount 34882
ElcLastRunTaggedWithArchiveItemCount 34882
ElcLastRunTaggedWithExpiryItemCount 0
ElcLastRunDeletedFromRootItemCount 0
ElcLastRunDeletedFromDumpsterItemCount 0
ElcLastRunArchivedFromRootItemCount 28
ElcLastRunArchivedFromDumpsterItemCount 0
ELCLastSuccessTimestamp 12.11.2021 16:40:37
So 30k+ items are processed, which is a good sign. This is only "tagged" items though, as in they haven't been moved yet. So again, wait for it to properly process the mailbox. The PowerShell cmdlet does not "run" processing, it simply signals it to run at the earliest convenience. And changing tags will only cause further delays, so just stick with the current configuration for a while.
For the record, I just did a quick test on my own mailbox with a newly created "7 days archive" tag, took less than 10 minutes to have the deleted items I tagged. But that's just a handful of items in a mailbox that hasn't had any retention changes in the past year at least... your mileage will vary.
Ok im really happy for your explanations. To see what's going on in the background is not that easy from a technician view :-)
I don't touch it now for a week, and hopefully it will work then.
I'll keep you updated!
Thanks and have a nice weekend!
Week is just the worst case scenario, just run the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant and wait for a day, if no changes are visible run it again tomorrow. And try to note if items are being processed in other folders, not just the Deleted items, this will give us a clue whether the issue is with the tag itself.
After some days, still the same, It's frustrating
Can you double-click one message (open in new window) and check the info bar? You should be seeing something like this:
In my case, I have both a "30 days delete" tag stamped on the folder, and a "7 days archive" one, as you can see both are reflected.
O finally I see this Tag now.
But this mail from 2020 will be archived on 2020/02/02, why is this tag false so late?
funny I see this tag only in Outlook not in OWA
Hm, maybe this is kicking in:
In the Deleted Items folder Date of delivery or creation unless the item was deleted from a folder that does not have an inherited or implicit retention tag.
If an item is in a folder that doesn't have an inherited or implicit retention tag applied, the item isn't processed by the MFA and therefore doesn't have a start date stamped by it. When the user deletes such an item, and the MFA processes it for the first time in the Deleted Items folder, it stamps the current date as the start date.
Ok that makes sense.
This comes I think because we have migrated everything to Exchange Online 3 weeks ago.
Thanks a lot for you help!!!!
Hi @Righter
Is your issue resolved now?
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