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Set up an archive and deletion policy for mailboxes in your Office 365 organization

Step 1: Enable archive mailboxes for users

  • Go to https://protection.office.com
  • Go to Data governance
  • Select the Archive.

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    A list of the mailboxes in your organization is displayed and whether the corresponding archive mailbox is enabled or disabled.

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  • Select all the mailboxes by clicking on the first one in the list, holding down the Shift key, and then clicking the last one in the list.
  • Under Bulk Edit
  • Click Enable

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  • Click Yes to close the warning message and start the process to enable the archive mailbox for each selected mailbox.

    When the process is complete

  • Click Refresh to update the list on the Archive page
    The archive mailbox is enabled for all user’s in your organization.

Step 2: Create new retention tags for the archive and deletion policies

  • Go to Exchange Admin Center
  • Go to Compliance management
  • Select retention tags



  • Create a custom archive policy tag
  • Click New tag +
  • Select applied automatically to entire mailbox (default)


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  • Name Type a name for the new retention tag
  • Retention action Select Move to Archive to move items to the archive mailbox when the retention period expires
  • Retention period Select When the item reaches the following age (in days), and then enter the duration of the retention period. For this scenario, items will be moved to the archive mailbox after 365 days (1 year)
  • Comment (Optional) Type a comment that explains the purpose of the custom retention tag
  • Click Save to create the custom archive tag

Create a custom deletion default policy tag

  • Create a custom Deletion policy tag
  • Click New tag +
  • Select applied automatically to entire mailbox (default)


  • Name Type a name for the new retention tag.
  • Retention action Select Permanently Delete to purge items from the mailbox when the retention period expires.
  • Retention period Select When the item reaches the following age (in days), and then enter the duration of the retention period. For this scenario, items will be purged after 365 days (1 year)
  • Comment (Optional) Type a comment that explains the purpose of the custom retention tag.
  • Click Save to create the custom deletion Tag

Step 3: Create a new retention policy

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  • In the Exchange Admin Center
  • Go to Compliance management  
  • Select Retention policies
  • Click New +

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  • In the Name box, type a name for the new retention policy; for example,  Archive and Deletion Policy
    Under Retention tags
  • Click Add New

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  • Select the Custom created retention tags
  • Click Add
  • Click OK

Step 4: Assign the new retention policy to user mailboxes


  • In  Exchange Admin Center
  • Go to Recipients
  • Select Mailboxes

    A list of all user mailboxes in your organization is displayed.
  • Select all the mailboxes by clicking on the first one in the list, holding down the Shift key, and then clicking the last one in the list.
  • Under Bulk Edit
  • Click More options


  • Under Retention Policy
  • Click Update



  • Select the retention policy that you created from the drop-down
  • Click Save



    To Verify that the new retention policy was assigned to mailboxes
  • Select a mailbox on the Mailboxes page
  • Click Edit
  • Click Mailbox features

    The name of the new policy assigned to the mailbox is displayed in the Retention policy drop-down list.