Retention policies remove mail older than a set age. Legal holds protect named members from deletion. Both live in Org Panel > Compliance, and need the Security admin role or higher.
Retention policies#
A policy has a folder list, an age in days, an action and a scope.
- Action: delete the messages, or move them to an Archive folder.
- Scope: all members, or chosen members.
- Folders: for example Inbox, Sent, Trash.
Messages newer than the age are never touched. Each run handles at most 500 messages per member, so a mistaken policy cannot empty a mailbox in one pass.
Test with a dry run#
New policies start in dry-run mode. A dry run counts what would be removed and reports "would delete N messages from M members". It changes nothing. Review the report, then turn dry run off.
Members whose mailbox sign-in details are not stored on the server are skipped, and the report counts them.
Legal holds#
A legal hold covers all members or a list of members. While a hold is active for a member:
- Retention policies skip them.
- Offboarding cannot delete their mailbox.
- They cannot permanently delete mail or empty Trash and Junk. They can still move messages to Trash.
A hold keeps mail in place. It does not copy mail anywhere, and it does not give anyone access to it. Release a hold from the same page.
Audit trail#
Creating, changing and deleting policies and holds, and every retention run, are recorded in the audit log with counts only, never message content.