Relevant Product: Mail Archiver
In this guide, we’ll explain how to automatically remove older emails from your mailbox, using Exchange and Outlook’s features.
For all organizations already using archiving, this can be an efficient, hands-free way to cut down on the total number of items in Exchange and the disk space their email occupies, which enhances performance and stability.
For all organizations already using archiving, this can be an efficient, hands-free way to cut down on the total number of items in Exchange and the disk space their email occupies, which enhances performance and stability.
In Outlook
This section describes how to set up an auto-archiving policy that deletes older emails automatically in Outlook.Note: You’ll need to repeat this process for each folder you want to clean automatically.
- In Outlook, right-click on the folder and select Properties.
For example purposes, the below screenshot displays the Inbox folder selected.
- Select the AutoArchive tab and select Archive this folder using this settings.
- In Clean out items older than, enter 180 days, or whatever the desired amount of days/months/years may be.
- Select the Permanently delete old items option.
- Click OK to save the changes and close the window.
In Exchange
This section describes how to set up an auto-archiving policy that deletes older emails automatically in Exchange.
- Go to the Exchange Management Console (under Microsoft Exchange 2010 in the Start menu on your server).
- Go to Organization Configuration and select Mailbox, then click Retention Policy Tags.
- Click New Retention Policy Tag on the right side-bar.
A wizard is displayed to guide you through creating your retention policy. - Select the folder you want to clean from the drop-down menu.
Note: You’ll need to repeat this process for each folder you want to clean automatically. - Define the number of days an email can be held for. For example, if you set this to 180 then any emails more than 180 days old will be deleted.
- Enter a name for your retention policy, then click New to create your retention policy.
The Exchange Management Console will display a progress bar briefly while it creates the policy, followed by a Success message to confirm the policy was created successfully. - Click Finish to exit the wizard.
- Click the Retention Policies tab.
- Click New Retention Policy, or right-click in a blank area and select New Retention Policy.
- Give the policy a name.
- Click Add to associate the appropriate Retention Policy Tags with it.
- Click OK when you’ve selected all the desired tags.
- Click Next when you’ve selected all the desired tags for this policy (example: tags for sent items, inbox, junk).
- Click Add to add the mailboxes this should apply to.
Select the mailboxes this should apply to. You can press [CTRL+A] to select all of the visible mailboxes, which can save time. Hold [CTRL] and click a mailbox if you’d like to de-select that one while keeping the rest selected. - Click OK when you’ve selected all the mailboxes you want this retention policy to apply to.
- Check to ensure all the desired mailboxes have been selected and click Next to proceed.
- The wizard will display the tags and mailboxes associated with your policy. Ensure they’re correct before you click New, which will create and apply the new policy.
- If successful, the New Retention Policy wizard will display a Completed next to each component of the policy.
- Click Finish to close the wizard and finish creating your policy.