What happens when you delete an email message from the Exchange mailbox?
When you delete an email in Exchange Online, the process and consequences are as below.
- Moves to Deleted Items When an email is simply deleted from a mailbox folder, this will move messages to Deleted Items folder. The email remains there until you either manually delete it or it is automatically removed by retention policies.
- Soft Deletion If you delete emails from any folder using the combination of Shift + Delete keys, or if you simply delete an email from the Deleted Items folder, it will be moved to the deletions folder in the Recoverable Items.
- Hard Deletion In the Recoverable Items folder, Exchange Online retains deleted items for 14 days by default. This retention period can be increased to a maximum of 30 days. After this period, the email will be purged and moved to the purges folder, making it invisible to users. Users have the option to recover or purge emails before the configured retention time expires.
To change how long deleted items are kept in Outlook, run the following cmdlet in the Exchange Online PowerShell.
Set-Mailbox -Identity <User’s UPN> -RetainDeletedItemsFor <Days>
You can use AdminDroid’s Mailbox Retention Settings report to determine the deleted item’s retention duration for all the mailboxes in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
- With this report, you can check the deleted item retention duration, applied retention policies, and other related metrics for all Exchange Online mailboxes.
Handy Hint: Use the Advanced Customization option to apply filters to the report, sort data, and select specific columns for enhanced visibility. You can also create a custom view and save it for future use.