First - I am glad to see everyone else is as confused as I am.. We have just installed MS exchange 2007 - Enterprise. We are currently a Notes shop. Our email policy says that the retention policies for email are as follows: Inbox - 90 days Deleted Items - 45 days Sent items - 45 days Person Folders - 18 months. We want to duplicate this in the Exchange environments. Of what I have read, Exchange uses Managed Folders to accomplish this. However, I see that there are only two types of Managed Folders; default and customized (dont think that is the right term). However, it is my understanding that you can apply policies only to the group of folders (default or customized). So inotherwords - since the "Inbox, deleted items, sent items" are considered Managed Default users, I can apply a policy to them but it is the same policy for all ? If I create Managed folders for all users (ie a folder structure called "User Messages") then I can only have a policy on the "User Messages" folder(s) that I create ? So I would have to create a 18 month folder, a 2 year folder so on and so on? Can a user create a folder and set a policy on it themselves ? Is there a way to force the user to use only the managed folders I create ? Rob

Here is a video that outlines the 5 steps to setup: http://msexchangeteam.com/videos/9/general/entry442782.aspx FYI: If you purchase enterprise CALs for your users you can use custom managed folders. Otherwise you must use the default. This is different than the concept ofenterprise vs. standard editions of Exchange. Each policy can include multiple folders. The actual retention times and such (called content settings) are defined on the folder, not in the policy itself. If you want to have some people auto-delete their inbox after 180 days (for example) you could create a new managed default folder, assign the proper settings and then include it in a policy that is assigned to a user. if you want other users to delete after 90 days, you can create yet another default folder, assign settings to it, create a new policy that includes this newest default folder and assign it to the 2nd group of users. Finally users cannot create managed folders, This can only be done with access to the Exchange server