Mailbox Management recipient policies no longer working on Exchange 2003 server
A few months back I created a new mail store for the purpose of using it to manage the mailboxes of users who never delete any e-mail. I created a recipient policy to delete mail older than a specific number of days for that particular mail store. That number of days changes as we will delete mail older than Jan 1, 2009 with a size limit of any. The first time I applied the policy and started the mailbox management process for the server, it worked as it was supposed to. Mail older than Jan 1, 09 was removed from all the mailboxes in the mail store. Over the past few weeks we have been adding more users to the mail store, sent out the requisite warnings that their mail would be deleted unless it was cleaned up, etc. Today we set the policy to delete immediately, and it did not work. The report that came back was mailboxes processed 0. I checked the policy again, it had not changed except I changed the number of days to 255 from whatever it was previously. There is also another policy on that server to clean out mail for disabled users that we keep in AD for 36 months (rule imposed by an audit). We keep the mailboxes for these users in their own mail store. We run this policy every 6 months or so just to clean out all the junk that accumulates in these old mailboxes. We have used this for years without an issue. I had removed the filter for this policy while working with the newer policy. One of the troubleshooting steps I have done this morning was to remove the filter on the newer policy mentioned above, and add a filter into this one and apply and run it. Same result. Mailboxes processed 0. The mail store with the disabled users has more than 500 mailboxes, and the policy is to delete mail older than 30 days, so this proves to me that these policies are just not working at all as there certainly would have been some mail deleted in the deleted user store. I also changed the setting on the deleted store policy to generate a report instead of delete, same result. Mailboxes processed 0. Application and System Event logs show no errors or warnings. I probably dont have the correct diagnostics turned on for this I imagine. Any assistance or idea on this one would be greatly appreciated.
September 13th, 2009 6:19pm

On Sun, 13-Sep-09 15:19:46 GMT, exile_ken wrote:l older than Jan 1, 09 was removed from all the mailboxes in the mail store. Over the past few weeks we have been adding more users to the mail store, sent out the requisite warnings that their mail would be deleted unless it was cleaned up, etc. Today we set the policy to delete immediately, and it did not work. The report that came back was mailboxes processed 0. I checked the policy again, it had not changed except I changed the number of days to 255 from whatever it was previously. Have you reapplied that policy? Does the policy's GUID appear in theusers msExchPoliciesIncluded property?>There is also another policy on that server to clean out mail for disabled users that we keep in AD for 36 months (rule imposed by an audit). We keep the mailboxes for these users in their own mail store. We run this policy every 6 months or so just to clean out all the junk that accumulates in these old mailboxes. Wouldn't it be easier to just set the maximum mailbox size to, say, who's allowed to send email to the mailbox?>We have used this for years without an issue. I had removed the filter for this policy while working with the newer policy. One of the troubleshooting steps I have done this morning was to remove the filter on the newer policy mentioned above, and add a filter into this one and apply and run it. Same result. Mailboxes processed 0. The mail store with the disabled users has more than 500 mailboxes, and the policy is to delete mail older than 30 days, so this proves to me that these policies are just not working at all as there certainly would have been some mail deleted in the deleted user store. I also changed the setting on the deleted store policy to generate a>report instead of delete, same result. Mailboxes processed 0. That sounds more like the policy not being applied. Have you checkedthat the msExchPoliciesIncluded property has the policy in there?---Rich MatheisenMCSE+I, Exchange MVP--- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
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September 13th, 2009 8:15pm

Thank you for the reply.I had reapplied the policy, more than once.I did get this policy to run last night. What I did was remove both recipient policies for Mailbox management for that server. I waited a few hours, then added the older on for disable users, and applied it. Waited a bit longer, then ran it to generate a report only. It did process all the mailboxes in the mail store. I then recreated the policy do delete mail 255 days old form the "cleanup" mailstore. Ran the process with the generate report only option, and the report combined the mailboxes form both stores. I removed the filter form the disabled so it would not run, changed the cleanup policy to delete the items immediatly, and started the mailbox management process. This deleted mmail from the 18 mailboxes in the store.Thanks again.Ken Merrigna
September 14th, 2009 5:11pm

For troubleshooting refer the below articlehttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/319188Troubleshooting The most common errors that occur when you use recipient policies to control mailboxes occur because of incorrectly configured filters. For example, if you configure Mailbox Manager to send detailed reports or summary reports to the administrator's mailbox after mailbox management is complete, when you start the mailbox cleanup process manually or the mailbox cleanup process starts according to its schedule, an administrative report may not be generated. Confirm that the filters are configured correctly by following the steps in the Create a mailbox management recipient policy section. Make sure that the filter produces the expected results when you click Find Now in the Find Exchange Recipients dialog box. Another common issue occurs when policies do not apply as you expect. This can be caused by overlapping policies. Only one mailbox recipient policy can be applied to each user. If you have more than one recipient policy applied to a user, make sure that the recipient policy membership does not overlap. If two mailbox recipient policies are applied to the same user, the priority of the recipient policies determines which recipient policy is used.
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September 14th, 2009 7:16pm

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