Apply Retention Policies and Archive Policies to Your Messages

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Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Microsoft Exchange, Live@edu

You can apply retention policies and archive policies to your e-mail items using Microsoft Office Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010 or later versions. These policies let you specify how long e-mail items should be kept and what should be done with them when they reach a certain age.

Even if you don’t apply policies to your e-mail items, items in your mailbox may be moved or deleted automatically based on default retention policies and default archive policies set up by the person that manages your mailbox.

How do I apply policies using Outlook Web App?

In Outlook Web App, you can apply either an archive policy or a retention policy, or both, to an e-mail item or folder. To do this, use the right-click menu.

  1. Sign in to Outlook Web App.
  2. To apply a policy to an individual item, right-click the item, point to Retention Policy or Archive Policy, and then select the policy you want. You can apply both a retention policy and an archive policy to an e-mail item. By default, Use Folder Policy is selected for your messages.
  3. To apply a policy to a folder, right-click the folder, click Retention Policy or Archive Policy, and then click the policy you want. You can apply both a retention policy and an archive policy to a folder. By default, Use Folder Policy is selected for your folders.
  4. If you previously assigned a policy to an item, you can select Use Folder Policy to clear the policy from the item.

Note

The Use Folder Policy setting lets you choose to assign an item the same policy that’s assigned to the folder the item is in. If the folder the item is in also has Use Folder Policy selected, the policy applied to it is the policy that’s assigned to the folder it’s in, and so on. If Use Folder Policy is selected, and none of the folders that the item is in has a policy applied, then any default policy that the administrator has applied to your mailbox will apply.

How do I apply policies using Outlook 2010?

In Outlook 2010, you can apply both a retention policy and an archive policy to an e-mail item or folder. The steps for applying policies are similar to the steps you use in Outlook Web App. You can use the right-click menu or the Policy button on the toolbar.

For information about how to apply policies using Outlook 2010, see the following topics in the Outlook 2010 Help.

What else do I need to know?

  • You can only view and apply retention policies and archive policies to your messages if you're using Outlook Web App or Outlook 2010. For information about how to get a free trial version or how to purchase Outlook 2010, visit the Microsoft Office Online Web site.
  • This feature may not be available for your mailbox.

What if I want to know more?