Emails are not moving to Archive Mailbox

I recently created a mailbox retention policy and applied it to all exchange online users. This policy is working fine for all users except few where emails are not getting moved from primary mailbox to archive mailbox.

After Investigation on this issue, it was discovered that the retention hold is enabled on the mailboxes. It was not allowing the email messages to move to archive. You can follow the steps in this blog post to check the retention hold status for users and update it to fix this issue.

Placing a mailbox on retention hold suspends the processing of an MRM retention policy by the Managed Folder Assistant for that mailbox. Retention hold is designed for situations such as a user being on vacation or away temporarily.

About retention hold

# Install Exchange Online Management PowerShell Module

Install-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
Import-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
$UserCredential = Get-Credential
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Credential $UserCredential -ShowProgress $true

# Check RetentionHoldEnabled status

Get-Mailbox "email address" | Select RetentionHoldEnabled

# If RetentionHoldEnabled is true, then change it to false

Set-Mailbox "email address" -RetentionHoldEnabled $false

# Check the Retention Policy and Retention Hold Value for all Mailboxes

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited | Where-Object {$_.RetentionHoldEnabled -eq $true} | Format-Table Name,RetentionPolicy,RetentionHoldEnabled -Auto

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For Legal or Compliance Purpose, you can put a user’s mailbox on Hold, which means that it will preserve mailbox content in the Purges Folder even if the user has deleted a mailbox item. Below diagram shows the sub folders in the Recoverable Items Folders and hold workflow process.

Get the list of all the users where Litigation Hold is enabled

get-mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Where-object {$_.LitigationHoldenabled -eq $true} | Select Name, LitigationHoldEnabled,Litigationholdduration

Set the Litigation hold on a user mailbox for 7 Years

set-mailbox "email address" -LitigationHoldEnabled $true -LitigationHoldDuration 2556

Enable the Litigation hold on All the User Mailboxes and Set the Duration to 7 years.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'UserMailbox'" | Set-Mailbox -LitigationHoldEnabled $true -LitigationHoldDuration 2556