Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2

Topic Last Modified: 2012-07-23

When a user deletes items from the Deleted Items default folder by using the Delete, Shift+Delete, or Empty Deleted Items Folder actions, the items are moved to the Recoverable Items\Deletions folder. The duration that deleted items remain in this folder is based on the deleted item retention settings configured for the mailbox database or the mailbox. By default, a mailbox database is configured to retain deleted items for 14 days, and the Recoverable Items warning quota and Recoverable Items quota are set to 20 gigabytes (GB) and 30 GB respectively.

Note:
Before the retention time for deleted items elapses, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office Outlook Web App users can recover deleted items by using the Recover Deleted Items feature. To learn more about these features, see the "Recover deleted items" topic for Outlook or Outlook Web App.

You can use the Shell to configure deleted item retention settings and Recoverable Items quotas for a mailbox or mailbox database. These values are ignored when a mailbox is placed on litigation hold.

Note:
You can't use the EMC to configure deleted item retention and recoverable items quotas.

To learn more about deleted item retention, the Recoverable Items folder, and litigation hold, see the following topics:

Looking for other management tasks related to recoverable items? Check out Managing Recoverable Items.

Use the Shell to configure deleted item retention for a mailbox

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Retention and legal holds" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.

This example configures April Stewart's mailbox to retain deleted items for 30 days.

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Set-Mailbox -Identity - "April Stewart" -RetainDeletedItemsFor 30

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-Mailbox.

Use the Shell to configure Recoverable Items quotas for a mailbox

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Retention and legal holds" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.

This example configures a Recoverable Items warning quota of 12 GB and a Recoverable Items quota of 15 GB for April Stewart's mailbox.

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Set-Mailbox -Identity "April Stewar"t -RecoverableItemsWarningQuota 12GB -RecoverableItemsQuota 15GB -UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $false
Note:
To configure a mailbox to use different Recoverable Items quotas than the mailbox database in which it resides, you must set the UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults parameter to $false.

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-Mailbox.

Use the Shell to configure deleted item retention for a mailbox database

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Retention and legal holds" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.

This example configures a deleted item retention period of 10 days for the mailbox database MDB2.

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Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity MDB2 -DeletedItemRetention 10

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-MailboxDatabase.

Use the Shell to configure Recoverable Items quotas for a mailbox database

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Retention and legal holds" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.

This example configures a Recoverable Items warning quota of 15 GB and a Recoverable Items quota of 20 GB on mailbox database MDB2.

Copy Code 
Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity MDB2 -RecoverableItemsWarningQuota 15GB -RecoverableItemsQuota 20GB

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-MailboxDatabase.