The default retention period for deleted items (those you can recover by using "Recover Deleted Items" in Outlook) is 14 days, but it can be changed; however, this is a per-mailbox setting, and it needs to be changed using PowerShell, because there is no GUI setting for it. It's easy enough to do this for all existing users, but then this process will need to be repeated anytime a new user is created.
Is there any way to globally set the default deleted item retention period in Exchange Online, so that it's automatically applied to new mailboxes?
(I'm tagging the question with Exchange-2013
too, since that's what Exchange Online is (currently) based on, and the question also applies to the on-premise edition.)
Best Answer
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:
In order to configure it, you can use the
Set-MailboxPlan
cmdlet:After doing this, the global settings will be changed:
This will apply the settings to all new users; however, you'll still need to modify it for existing users: