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Turn Off or Suspend Messaging Records Management

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Applies to: Exchange Server 2010

To meet individual, IT, or business requirements, you may need to turn off or temporarily suspend messaging records management (MRM) for an individual user or for a Mailbox server. Reasons you may need to turn off or suspend MRM include:

  • If a mailbox user is away from the office or is otherwise unable to access e-mail, you can temporarily disable MRM for the mailbox by placing it on retention hold. When a mailbox is on retention hold, it's no longer processed by the Managed Folder Assistant. When the mailbox user returns or is able to access the mailbox again, you can remove the retention hold from the mailbox.
  • If you need to test or troubleshoot performance issues, you can temporarily turn off MRM on that server by clearing the schedule for the Managed Folder Assistant.
  • If you need to remove a retention tag from mailboxes (which have a retention policy with that tag applied), you can remove the tag from the policy.
  • If you want a retention policy or a managed folder mailbox policy to no longer apply to a mailbox, you can remove the policy from the mailbox.
  • If your organization decides not to use MRM features, you can turn off MRM permanently for the entire organization. If you later decide to deploy MRM, you have the ability to do so.

Place mailboxes on retention hold

You can place mailboxes on retention hold to turn off MRM temporarily (for example when users are on vacation). This suspends the processing of managed folder mailbox policies for the mailbox until retention hold is disabled. This is different from placing mailboxes on legal hold.

For details about how to place a mailbox on retention hold, see Place a Mailbox on Retention Hold.

To learn more about legal hold, see Understanding Legal Hold.

Turn off MRM temporarily for individual servers

There are two ways in which you can stop the Managed Folder Assistant from running on a server:

When you stop the Managed Folder Assistant, managed content settings are no longer applied to managed folders on that server. No new managed custom folders are created and retention and journaling policies aren't enforced. However, folder quotas continue to be enforced.

Remove retention tags from mailboxes

To remove a retention tag from a mailbox, you unlink the tag from the retention policy. When you unlink a retention policy tag (RPT) for a default folder, the default mailbox tag applies to all items in that folder. When you unlink a personal tag, it's no longer available to the user.

This Shell example unlinks the retention tag Delete - 3 Days from the retention policy Corp-Users.

$tags = (Get-RetentionPolicy "Corp-Users").RetentionPolicyTagLinks
$tags -= "Deleted Items - 3 Days"
Set-Retention Policy "Corp-Users" -RetentionPolicyTagLinks $tags

Remove retention policies from mailboxes

You can stop a retention policy from applying to a mailbox by removing the policy from the mailbox user's properties.

This Shell example removes the retention policy from the mailbox jpeoples.

Set-Mailbox jpeoples -retentionpolicy $null.

This Shell example removes the retention policy from all mailboxes in the Exchange organization.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter {RetentionPolicy -ne $null} | Set-Mailbox -RetentionPolicy $null

This Shell example removes the retention policy Corp-Finance from all mailbox users who have the policy applied.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter {RetentionPolicy -eq "Corp-Finance"} | Set-Mailbox -RetentionPolicy $null

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-Mailbox and Get-Mailbox.

Remove managed folder mailbox policies from mailboxes

This example removes managed folder mailbox policy from the mailbox jpeoples, without affecting the managed folders in the mailbox.

Set-Mailbox -Identity jpeoples -ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy:$null

Remove managed folders and MRM policies from mailboxes

In Exchange Server 2010, you can use the ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy parameter of the Set-Mailbox cmdlet to remove all MRM policies and attributes from a mailbox. When you run this cmdlet, the following tasks are performed:

  • MRM policies and MRM properties for any managed folders that were created as part of any MRM policies are removed
  • Managed folders that are empty are removed from the mailbox
  • Managed folders that contain items are converted to standard folders

This Shell example removes the managed folder mailbox policy and all managed folders from the mailbox jpeoples.

Set-Mailbox -Identity jpeoples -RemoveManagedFolderAndPolicy

Turn off MRM permanently for an entire organization

To turn off MRM for an organization, delete all its managed custom folders and delete all managed folder mailbox policies. After this is complete, folder quotas, retention, and journaling policies aren't enforced, and the MRM root folder and all managed custom folders are converted into normal folders that can be moved, renamed, or deleted by the user.

For details about how to turn off MRM, see Permanently Turn Off Messaging Records Management for an Organization.

Note

If the user deletes all the managed custom folders in the Managed Folders root folder, the Managed Folders root folder is converted into a normal folder—one that can be moved, renamed, or deleted like any other folder.
If the user doesn't delete all the managed custom folders in the Managed Folders root folder, users won't be able to move, rename, or delete it.