Forum Discussion

Mikeydee135's avatar
13 years ago

can i change a retention category for already archived items in a specific mailbox?

Hi guys

 

 

I'm assuming this has to be possible via an sql script. what i have is a requirement to alter the retention category for all archived items within a specifc mailbox archive (exchange mailbox if relevant).

the scenario:

this requirement has come about because of a shared mailbox with heavy use which has existed for a decade and built up a number of messages, these were stored in PST files. Unfortunately, and contrary to my assurances from the team in question, the PST files were duplicated on each team member's machine, many servers around the world and pretty much anywhere you can put a copy of a pst file both on and offline. the PST migration has happened and all (at least i hope all of them by now) have been eaten by the pst migrator and given our company retention category which prevents deletion as designed.

the massive duplication doesn't bother me on a storage front (i use single instancing to enormous effect on this mailbox) but annoys the users terribly where the archive explorer shows lists and lists of the "same" imported pst file under the imported folder (we keep them separate to allow users to see the structure they were used to with their pst files) 

the team in question have agreed to root through the items and delete duplicates and combine the rest into a folder strucutre of their own design, IF i can make the changes on the Outlook mailbox front also affect the vault in the archive explorer, this is what i'm struggling with.

I have temporarily preventing this mailbox from nightly archive jobs and tried restoring large chunks of data and deleting them from the archive, it appeared to have helped but the items were still in the archive explorer. and my event log filled with failures which appear to be related to the inability to delete the archived item. 

i have changed the retention policy which applies to this mailbox, to allow deletion but this doesn't update the existing archived items. the team attempted to move around the items in the mailbox and i'm now seeing many of these: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH70292 it all makes sense and i'm fairly sure i could solve it fairly simply if i could mark all items as part of a differnt retention category, restore them out of the archive, allow users to tidy up, change the archiving policy back to the normal and hey presto! a tidy mailbox/vault..... i hope.

Thanks in advance for your help guys.

 

 

Mike

 

  • your best and easiest bet is just to uncheck the prevent deletion on the retention category and then run the duplicate remover for EV so that any of the duplicates are deleted from that archive

  • your best and easiest bet is just to uncheck the prevent deletion on the retention category and then run the duplicate remover for EV so that any of the duplicates are deleted from that archive

  • Thanks for your responses. I'm waiting for the contact for the team in question to return to the office (paternity leave has delayed progress) and discuss this with him before progressing. hopefully we can reach some solution between us, most likley involving the above suggestions. will keep you posted.

     

     

    Thanks

     

    Mike