Retention polices

Question

I have three questions related to retention policies.

1. Under Data Lifecycle Management → Exchange (Legacy) → MRM Retention Policies, I have two policies:

Policy1: This policy includes retention tags for all default folders with a retention period of 6 months. For personal folders, users can choose from the available retention tags.

Policy2: This policy includes retention tags for all default folders with a retention period of 2 years. For personal folders, users can choose from the available retention tags.

Most of my users are assigned Policy1. I want to assign Policy2 to one of my users, let's say user1@contoso.com. In the Exchange Admin Center, I went to Mailbox → selected user1@contoso.com → Mailbox → Retention Policy → Manage Mailbox Policy → Retention Policy and selected Policy2 and saved it. Is this the correct approach?

How can I verify in PowerShell that user1@contoso.com has been assigned Policy2, and how can I check which retention tag is applied to each folder within their mailbox?

2. I have only a few users assigned to Policy2. How can I find out which mailboxes are assigned Policy2? Please guide me on how to export a list of these mailbox.

3.If at all i dont want any retention policy to be applied on the mailbox. for that mailbox if i select Retention policy to no policy. will any policy overwrite happen how can i check it.

Answer 1

Hi @Roger Roger ,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A platform!

Let me answer your questions one by one:

1. Yes, you are on the right track in the Exchange Admin Center. You have correctly assigned the new retention policy to the user by navigating to Mailbox → Select user1@contoso.com → Mailbox → Retention Policies → Manage Mailbox Policies → Retention Policies and selecting Policy2.
2. To verify that user1@contoso.com has Policy2 assigned, you can use the following PowerShell command:

Get-Mailbox -Identity user1@contoso.com | Select-Object Name,RetentionPolicy 

This command will show the retention policy assigned to the specified mailbox.

To check which retention tag is applied to each folder in their mailbox, you can use:

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity user1@contoso.com | Select-Object FolderPath,FolderType,RetentionPolicyTag 

This command will list all folders and their retention tags.

3. To find out which mailboxes have Policy2 assigned, you can use the following PowerShell command:

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Where-Object {$_.RetentionPolicy -eq "Policy2"} | Select-Object Name,RetentionPolicy 

To export this list to a CSV file, you can extend the command as follows:

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Where-Object {$_.RetentionPolicy -eq "Policy2"} | Select-Object Name,RetentionPolicy | Export-Csv -Path "C:\Policy2Mailboxes.csv" -NoTypeInformation 

4. If you do not want any retention policy applied to a mailbox, you can set the retention policy to None. Use the following PowerShell command:

Set-Mailbox -Identity user1@contoso.com -RetentionPolicy $null 

To verify that no retention policy is applied, you can check using the following command:

Get-Mailbox -Identity user1@contoso.com | Select-Object Name,RetentionPolicy 

This will confirm that the retention policy is set to None.

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Please feel free to contact me for any updates. And if this helps, don't forget to mark it as an answer.

Best,

Jake Zhang