How delete Purges from Exchange Online mailbox?

[peankymark]

Hello! I need help with Exchange Online.

I want delete Purges on a mailbox.

What I do:

Check:

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics email@domain.com -FolderScope RecoverableItems | FL Name,FolderAndSubfolderSize,ItemsInFolderAndSubfolders
Name                       : Recoverable Items
FolderAndSubfolderSize     : 78.38 GB (84,161,603,135 bytes)
ItemsInFolderAndSubfolders : 82747
...

Get-Mailbox email@domain.com | FL *HoldApplied*

ComplianceTagHoldApplied : False
DelayHoldApplied         : False
DelayReleaseHoldApplied  : False


New-ComplianceSearch -Name "SearchOne" -ExchangeLocation email@domain.com
Start-ComplianceSearch "SearchOne" 
New-ComplianceSearchAction -SearchName "SearchOne" -Purge -PurgeType HardDelete

No results.

Try “refresh”:
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity email@domain.com -holdcleanup

No result

And many other things. I need help!

ADD:

1. Try another way: purview.microsoft.com → create Retention policy with rule “not to hold, delete after 1 day”. Apply to one mailbox and see note, that this can be aplied during one week! So this is not good way and may be without success too.

Get-Mailbox -Identity "email@domain.com" | FL *RET*


UseDatabaseRetentionDefaults  : False
RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup : False
RetentionHoldEnabled          : False
EndDateForRetentionHold       :
StartDateForRetentionHold     :
RetentionComment              :
RetentionUrl                  :
InactiveMailboxRetireTime     :
RetentionPolicy               :
RetainDeletedItemsFor         : 00:00:00

May be this one helps. For example, value 00:00:00 can be acts as “forever”? I don’t know. But may be.

As I think trouble is to understand what cancels deletion.
But how to check?

[michev]

The Purges folder comes with its own retention settings, which cannot be overridden by retention tags/policies/compliance search. The only way would be to disable the single-item recovery feature, which effectively is the same thing as setting RetainDeletedItemsFor to 0, basically the last steps you tried.
Even then, items are not immediately purged, as the MFA needs to reprocess the mailbox and this can take up to a week in Exchange Online. Start-ManagedFolderAssistant simply “asks” the MFA to process the mailbox when possible, it does not force anything.
Lastly, if the mailbox is on any type of hold, that can also prevent you from removing items in the Purges folder, and some other RecoverableItems folders. Refer to this article for detailed steps for such scenarios: Delete items in the Recoverable Items folder | Microsoft Learn

[Jonathan-Johnson]

Retention settings don’t work like everybody thinks they should.

When you set a retention flag to delete items from Deleted Items after 30 days, that does not mean that items older than 30 days are immediately purged from Deleted Items.

What it means is that items will be deleted 30 days after the retention flag is applied to the message. Practically, when you apply the rule to the Deleted Items folder, the flag is applied to all messages in the folder, and then stuff won’t be deleted until 30 days later. And items that are placed in the folder (after applying the rule) will be deleted 30 days after they are placed in the folder, because the flag will be applied when they are placed in the folder.

This also means that if you modify the retention rule, the retention flag is reset so the countdown to deletion starts over.

There’s another thing to be aware of: when an item is removed from Deleted Items (or permanently deleted from another folder so it doesn’t go to Deleted Items), it’s not actually removed from the mailbox. It is only removed from the listing, and a flag is applied to the item to permanently delete after a predefined time (by default, it’s 30 days). This allows an administrator or, if permissions allow, a user to recover items that have been “permanently” deleted within that window.

This means that even if you’ve purged the Deleted Items from a mailbox, you won’t see the mailbox shrink until that 30 day window has passed.

Now, I’m not an expert on Exchange Online, and there are some additional features that didn’t appear in on-prem versions of Exchange. So your mileage may vary.

[peankymark]

I already see this article, try follow, but on some step my case differs from article order. I do the same with several mailboxes and with one everythink ok while others not. After that after some additional actions from my side no reaction, after 2-3 days I see result. But not on all mailboxes, but randomly on another one. After that ask here. Thank you for answer!

[peankymark]

Thank you, everything looks so…