How Long Does Office 365 Keep Deleted Emails with The Help of Retention Policy?

Ever wonder how long Office 365 keeps deleted emails? Understanding this aspect is crucial for safeguarding your data and potentially saving costs. Dive into this comprehensive guide to explore the intricacies of deleted email management in Office 365, including insights into retention policies.

 

With a growing number of organizations facing challenges related to the complexity and sheer volume of data, data loss or deletion within MS Office 365 has become a common issue. Microsoft Office 365 keeps data items even after accidental or intentional deletion. However, Office 365 mailboxes are susceptible to data loss due to anything from simple misclicks to more complex network breaches.

This leads to several questions, such as:

What happens to mailboxes deleted from Office 365? How long do emails stay in Deleted Items in Outlook? What retention policies does Microsoft Office 365 offer? Retention Policies That Can Reappear Office 365 Deleted Emails

This post aims to provide answers to these queries.

To understand exactly how long Microsoft 365 keeps deleted items, you must know the difference between “Standard Deletion Limits” and “Compliance Retention Policies”. It also assists in comprehending the “Microsoft 365 Shared Responsibility Model”.

Standard Deletion Limits vs. Compliance Retention Policies

#A: Standard Deletion Limits (For Everyday Users):

The following is the default lifecycle of a deleted email in a standard Microsoft 365 environment when dedicated compliance rules are not applied:

#1: The “Deleted Items” Folder (Soft Delete):

• What happens: When a user clicks “Delete” on an email in Outlook or Outlook on the Web, it goes directly to the “Deleted Items” folder.
• How long it stays: Forever. As a rule, Microsoft 365 does not automatically clear the “Deleted Items” folder. Email stays here until the user manually wipes out the folder. Or if the administrator has configured an Outlook rule to “Empty the Deleted Items folder when I sign out”.
• How to recover it: Instant. The user can simply drag and drop the email back to their inbox.

#2: The “Recoverable Items” Folder (Hard Delete)

• What Happens: If a user wipes out their “Deleted Items” folder or if they permanently delete an email by hitting “Shift + Delete”, the email is transferred to a hidden folder called “Recoverable Items”.
• How long it stays: 14 Days. Exchange Online retains items in the Recoverable Items folder for 2 weeks.
• Can it be extended: Yes, admins can utilize Exchange PowerShell or the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) to extend this recovery window to a maximum of 30 days.
• How to recover it?: Using the “Recover Deleted Items” tool (top of the Deleted Items folder in Outlook), users can recover emails themselves.

#3: The Permanent Delete

• What Happens: Once the 14-to-30-day window in the “Recoverable Items” folder expires, the Managed Folder Assistant (MFA) permanently deletes the messages from the Exchange database.
• How long it stays: 0 Days. The messages are completely removed.
• How to recover it?: The emails cannot be recovered by the user, the administrator, or even Microsoft support unless a third-party backup tool (like SysTools) or a Compliance Retention Policy is in place.

Acknowledge the table to understand the default lifecycle of a deleted email at a single glance:

#B: Long-Term Compliance Retention Policies (IT Management)

Legal holds, regulatory compliance, or internal investigations make a 30-day recovery limit insufficient for organizations. Therefore, Microsoft offers advanced data lifecycle management tools via Microsoft Purview. These policies simply take precedence over standard deletion limits.

#1: Microsoft Purview Retention Policies

• What it does: An admin can implement a Retention Policy for an entire organization, particular users, or specific types of data. These policies mandate Microsoft 365 to keep data in a hidden “Preservation Hold” library, bypassing hard deletes by users.
• How long it stays: Can be modified by the admin. A retention policy can be configured for 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, or even forever.
• The user experience: The email appears permanently deleted to the end user. They cannot see it or recover it. However, an IT admin or compliance officer can utilize eDiscovery to search for and extract that email years later.

#2: eDiscovery and Litigation Holds

• What it does: When an enterprise is facing a lawsuit, they can place a user’s mailbox on a “Litigation Hold”.
• How long it stays: Indefinitely. Until the legal hold is manually removed by the administrator, nothing can be permanently deleted. Even standard deletion limits or automated cleanup tasks will not act upon during a hold.

#3: MRM (Messaging Records Management) Retention Tags

MRM is a legacy, but still functional feature in Exchange Online. Enterprise admins still utilize it to create custom retention tags to dictate how long items stay in particular folders. For example, an admin could create a tag that allows messages to be preserved for up to 24,855 days (approx 68 years) prior to being archived or removed.

Automatically Emptying Deleted Items Folder Upon Logout

If you want to empty the Deleted Items Folder automatically every time you log out, then you need to enable the automatic emptying option by following these steps:

For Classic Outlook (Desktop App):

1. Open Classic Outlook >> click “File” (in the top-left corner).
2. Select “Options” (at the bottom of the left menu).
3. Click on “Advanced” (in the left sidebar of the “Options” window).
4. Find the “Outlook Start and Exit” section.
5. Check the “Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting” box.



6. Lastly, click “OK” to save the changes.

For Outlook on the Web/New Outlook:

1. Click the “Gear (Settings)” icon (in the top right corner of the inbox).
2. Select “Mail” >> click “Message Handling”.
3. Check the box saying, “Empty my deleted items folder when signing out (or when closing)”.



4. Hit the “Save” button (at the bottom of the page).

How to Recover Deleted Emails Using M365 Retention Policies

Given the increased reliance on cloud services for data storage, understanding how long Office 365 retains emails is crucial. Microsoft provides a Retention policy feature, enabling Office 365 users to manage the duration for which a message is retained in a folder.

• Default Retention Policy

Every Microsoft Office 365 account has predefined retention tags for folders or items such as Inbox, Deleted Items, Sent Items, Drafts, and Junk Email folders. These retention tags cannot be modified by users. Current retention options for deleted items recovery include:

• Managing Retention policy: Outlook Web Apps (OWA) allows users to view previously created policies. The default setting for retention time duration for all folders and messages is “Never Delete.”



• Manage Retention policy

Here, you can only manage previously created policies. For this, Outlook Web Apps (OWA) allows you to view the retention policies that are created by the Office 365 administration. The retention time duration setting for all folders and messages has been set to Never Delete by default.

Retention policies can be managed by following these steps:

1. First of all, sign in to the Outlook on the Web account.
2. Then, select the Outlook option from the top of the page.
3. Now, click on the Settings icon >> Options >> Mail >> Retention policies.

1. First, sign in to the Outlook Web Apps account.
2. Then, select the Outlook or Mail option and go to the folder pane.
3. After that, select the Assign policy option otherwise, choose Use parent folder policy.

Deleted Items vs. Recoverable Items: Understanding the Difference

• Every Office 365 mailbox is assigned a Retention Policy.
• The Default Retention Policy includes a tag that archives data items after two years.
• When applied to Office 365 mailboxes, a Retention Policy also affects the online archive mailbox.
• Office 365’s retention time duration operates as a scheduled task running for seven days. Emails can be retained up to 7 days past the expiry date.
• Mailboxes smaller than 10 MB are not processed by the scheduled task unless the task is manually initiated.

What Else Do You Need to Know?

Despite Office 365’s super flexible retention policies, data loss or accidental data deletion within Office 365 remains a significant concern for users and organizations. Office 365’s retention policies don’t ensure complete and swift recovery of deleted or lost data.

Furthermore, these policies differ for each application within the cloud platform. Creating a backup of Office 365 data items using tools like SysTools Office 365 Backup & Restore becomes crucial as it provides the sole option for data retrieval after the retention period ends.

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How Does the Tool Work to Download Office 365 Emails?

• Step 1. Download, install, and run the software.



• Step 2. Choose Office 365 and Outlook as platforms.



• Step 3. Enable the required workload and set the date filter.
• Step 4. Validate source credentials and set destination.



• Step 5. Choose user accounts and click the Start button.