How to Set Email Retention Policies in Exchange 2003

Create a mailbox management recipient policy

Note Before you create a new recipient mailbox management policy, you must determine the following:
• What limits you want the policy to enforce.
• What group you want the policy to control.
• How you want the policy to handle messages that go past policy limits.
The following procedure configures a mailbox limit for users in the accounts department of a test environment.

To create a mailbox management recipient policy, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.

2. In the left pane of Exchange System Manager, expand the Recipients object, right-click Recipient Policies, point to New, and then click Recipient Policy.

The New Policy dialog box appears.

3. Click to select the Mailbox Manager Settings check box, and then click OK.

Note If you do not see the option for Mailbox Manager Settings, reapply the Exchange service pack. It may not have been correctly applied.

4. The Properties dialog box appears. Type a name for the recipient policy in the Name box.

Note We recommend that you use a descriptive name, such as "Accounts Department Mailbox Settings."

5. Click Modify.

The Find Exchange Recipients dialog box appears.

6. Click the General tab. In this example, mailbox management settings apply only to accounts that have an Exchange mailbox. Therefore, click to clear the Users with external e-mail addresses check box, the Groups check box, the Contacts check box, and the Public Folders check box to exclude these groups from the recipient policy.

7. Click the Storage tab to configure mailbox management recipient policies that are specific to a particular Exchange 2000 computer.

Then, do one of the following:
• Click Mailboxes on this server, and then click Browse. The Select Exchange Server list box appears. Select the server that you want to use, and then click OK.
• Click Mailboxes in this mailbox store, click Browse to search for a store, and then click OK.

8. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Field. You can now select any of the following options:
• User
• Contact
• Group
• Public Folder

9. For this example, click User, and then click Department to select Department in the field value.

10. Under Condition, click any of the following:
• Starts with
• Ends with
• Is (exactly)
• Is not
• Present
• Not present

11. If you click Starts with, Ends with, Is (exactly), or Is not as your condition, type a value in the Value field. For example, click Is (exactly), and then type Accounts to find all employees who work for the accounts department.

12. Click Add to add the condition to the list.

Note You can add additional conditions, but remember that all conditions must be true for a match to be displayed.

13. After you have finished adding conditions, click Find Now.

Any matches to the conditions are displayed in the new list that appears in the Find Exchange Recipients dialog box.

14. If the list displays the correct users for this recipient policy, click OK. If not, revise the search conditions until your search displays the correct users for this recipient policy.

15. Click OK. You receive the following message:
When a recipient policy filter changes it does not mean that proxy addresses for recipients who may no longer be under the control of the policy will be automatically re-evaluated. For these recipients to receive proxies from the new policies that they belong to, use 'Apply this policy now' on the policies that now affect these recipients.
This message does not affect mailbox management recipient policies. Click OK.

16. Under Filter rules, the LDAP filter statement shows the current filter rule. Click the Mailbox Manager Settings (Policy) tab.

Note If the Mailbox Manager Settings (Policy) tab is not available after you apply Exchange 2000 Server SP1, right-click the recipient policy, click Change Property Pages, and then click to select the Mailbox Manager Settings check box.

17. Under When processing a mailbox, click one of the following options for handling messages that go past the policy limits:
• Generate report only
• Move items to Deleted Items folder
• Move to System Cleanup folder
• Delete immediately

Note Use caution when you use the Delete the message immediately option on folders, because users may have to recover their messages.

18. In the list of folders, select the folder that you want to configure, and then click Edit.

19. In the Folder Retention Settings dialog box, type an age limit when you want the selected processing action to occur, specify a size limit for the messages that you want the action to apply to, and then click OK.

For example, if you type 90 and 2048, all messages that are older than 90 days and over 2 megabytes (MB) are processed.

20. Repeat steps 18 and 19 for each folder in the list that you want to configure.

21. Click Send notification mail to users after processing if you want to send users an e-mail message notifying them when their mailboxes have been processed. Click Message to edit the notification message.

22. Click the Insert the number of messages processed check box if you want a summary of the number of oversize messages processed. Click OK to return to the Properties dialog box.

23. If you want to exclude certain message classes (for example, to prevent the processing task reports), click the Exclude specific message classes box, and then click Customize. The Message Classes dialog box appears. Type a message class in the Exclude Message Classes field. For example, type IPM.Task, and then click Add. Add all the classes you want to exclude.

Message class types include:
• Calendar IPM.Appointment
• Contacts IPM.Contact
• Inbox IPM.Note
• Journal IPM.Activity
• Notes IPM.StickyNote
• Tasks IPM.Task
• Meeting Requests IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Request

For a full list of message classes, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa262246(office.10).aspx

24. After you have finished adding message classes, click OK to return to the Properties dialog box.

25. Click OK to close the Properties dialog box.

The new mailbox management recipient policy is displayed in the right pane in Exchange System Manager.

Configure mailbox management at the server level
To schedule the day and time when a policy will run, change the settings at a server level. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.

2. In the left pane of Exchange System Manager, expand the Servers object.

3. Right-click the computer that you want to configure, and then click Properties.

The Servername Properties dialog box appears.

4. Click the Mailbox Management tab to display the current settings.

5. Under Start mailbox management process, do one of the following:
• Click the drop-down list to select a time for the mailbox management to run.
• Click Customize, click a day in the left column, and then click a time on the top row. After you select the times that you want, click OK.

6. Click Reporting to select the type of report (either a detailed report or a summary) to create when mailboxes are processed. You must also select a recipient to receive the reports. Click Browse, select a recipient, and then click OK.

Note You cannot send reports to distribution lists.

7. Click OK to accept the mailbox management settings