Finding and recovering deleted Microsoft 365 data
In addition to retention, it is important to have an understanding of what happens when content is deleted from locations in Microsoft 365 and what steps you can take to recover that content. First, let’s take a look at how this applies to user mailboxes.
User mailboxes
There are two types of deleted Exchange Online user mailboxes. These are hard-deleted mailboxes and soft-deleted mailboxes:
- A hard-deleted mailbox is a mailbox that has been soft-deleted for more than 30 days, and the associated Azure AD user has been hard-deleted. There are various scenarios that can apply to hard-deleted mailboxes. Refer to the Further reading section for links to more information about this. Hard-deleted mailboxes cannot be recovered.
- A soft-deleted mailbox is one that has been deleted either via the Microsoft 365 admin center or using the
Remove-Mailbox
PowerShell cmdlet, after which it has remained in the Azure AD recycle...