Exchange shortcut deletion - items currently being archived

[Ed_Laukiavich]

I am in process of removing EV from our Exchange server(s) due to an email consolidation. I have exported all of the archived items out to PSTs and will have those re-imported on the new platform. I set the Shortcut Deletion on the Exchange policy to 1 day to remove all of the shortcuts from the mailboxes but started finding mailboxes with shortcuts much older than one day. What I came to realize is that even though these items have a shortcut icon in Outlook they are not actually archived but "being archived by EV", some of these are over a year old or older and even defy our retention schedules.

Question is, is there a way to clean these up or remove the "being archived" status? BTW in checking the export to the PSTs the items are in the PSTs so I am not opposed to losing them all together from EV.

[John_Chisari · Accepted solution]

Ok, sounds like they are pending archive.

You can setup Pending Shortcut Timeout in the Mailbox Policy.  If I remember, you set this to 0.  Then run the Archive Task in report mode against the mailboxes.  All pending archives will revert back to a normal email.

Or if you prefer, since the items are in the PST - you can just delete them manually from the mailbox either via a script, or you can create a view by message class EnterpriseVault.Archive.Pending and delete them that way.

[LCT]

Beig archiving probably means those items are still pending. have you checked those items to confirm that they are actually pending items rather thyan shortcuts? you probably need to dtrace the shrotcut deletion processes.

[jim_leggett]

You can check the message class of the item. You will have to change the view in the mailbox and add message class to the view.

Right click at the top of the inbox where it says From, Subject, etc. etc.

View settings => Columns => All Mail Fields => Message Class => Add => OK =>

The message class field should show.

The message class for a pending item is IPM.Note.EnterpriseVault.PendingArchive

[JesusWept3]

beware about deleting them, just because they're pending doesn't mean theyve actually made it to storage, you may end up deleting items where that is the only copy, would recommend johns suggestion of pending shortcut timeout, or cancel pending via the EV outlook add in or using a tool to change the message class back to IPM.Note

[Ed_Laukiavich]

Set the Pending timeout to 0 as suggested and the items are no longer pending, I suspect that the retention rules should take over now and remove the past due items

Thanks all for your timely and graet advice

[LCT]

Hi Jim,

I know how to view message class in Outlook but wasn't my point (If I remmber correctly, I believe that was one of the interview questions to become a Tech Support Engineer at SYMC ;-)). My point was to dtrace so that you know which items belong to which mailbox and then check the mailbox for the pending items. Perhaps I should been clearer with the dtracing process and why :)