Auto Archiving is a client feature and thus you'd need control of the clients to turn it off. With that being said, if your hope is to just store everything in the mailbox instead of an archive, you'd be better off disabling the ones you can via group policy and sending a notice to all as to why they no longer need to auto-archive.
Assuming you're trying to purge data, and not let them archive, like i said, that will be tough for unmanaged clients.
Edit 1:
I stand by my original post but have some more info to add. First, i think this is more of a policy issue than a technical one so to speak. I realize of course that policy enforcement is easier said than done. Second, as i stated manage the ones you can and notify the ones you can't.
Now for some other ideas, you could put in some protective measures since i don't know of any preventive measures.
- If you're running exchange 2010, you can extend the time of the recycle bin. Just be mindful this will grow your store. http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/single-item-recovery/
- Actually archiving everything could help as well, something like a Symantec e vault, Depending on which solution you use, this could also help to reduce the size of your mail store.
I asked Microsoft support, and they told me this can not only be done, but it can even be done by the customer, without requiring any support call.
The global configuration for the deleted items retention period is stored in the Mailbox Plans assigned to users:
PS C:\windows\system32> Get-MailboxPlan | ft Name, RetainDeletedItemsFor
Name RetainDeletedItemsFor
---- ---------------------
ExchangeOnlineDeskless-200f67ad-971f-4485-8df4-496cb337aaa0 14.00:00:00
ExchangeOnlineEnterprise-7d4dfcb8-b74f-4fbc-b154-008eba3ed7ab 14.00:00:00
ExchangeOnline-6562c5b9-cec6-4d6c-bbed-5cd1551877c7 14.00:00:00
In order to configure it, you can use the Set-MailboxPlan
cmdlet:
Get-MailboxPlan | Set-MailboxPlan -RetainDeletedItemsFor "30.00:00:00"
After doing this, the global settings will be changed:
PS C:\windows\system32> Get-MailboxPlan | ft Name, RetainDeletedItemsFor
Name RetainDeletedItemsFor
---- ---------------------
ExchangeOnlineDeskless-200f67ad-971f-4485-8df4-496cb337aaa0 30.00:00:00
ExchangeOnlineEnterprise-7d4dfcb8-b74f-4fbc-b154-008eba3ed7ab 30.00:00:00
ExchangeOnline-6562c5b9-cec6-4d6c-bbed-5cd1551877c7 30.00:00:00
This will apply the settings to all new users; however, you'll still need to modify it for existing users:
Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -RetainDeletedItemsFor "30.00:00:00"
Best Answer
You can write a script and run it daily (get a list of all mailboxes without a retention policy) or use a cmdlet extension agent to detect when mailbox is created and automatically assign a rentention policy (don't have access to exchange 2010 atm so can't really test it):
or only for this mailbox: