Calendar items or Contacts are not being deleted by the set Retention Delete Policy (4217063)

Calendar items or Contacts are not being deleted by the set Retention Delete Policy

You notice not all of the Calendar items and Contacts are being deleted by the Delete Policy you have created. Most Calendar items are being deleted, however there are some that are not. 

In the Message table in the ArchiveManager database, the NoPurgeBefore column has a future date set. E.g 2017-10-1 or 9999-99-1. 

The NoPurgeBefore date in the future means that the appointment is either a reoccurring appointment without an end date, or a future end date. 

This is true for both Contacts and Calendar items -This is as designed so that Contacts and Calendar items are not Retention Deleted as Contacts are constantly being used and updated and therefore the date on a Contact can change.  As for Calendar items, many appointments are set in the future and/or are recurring items so their date can also be this way. 

When creating the Delete Policy for Calendars and/or Contacts select the ‘Purge Future Meetings’ option. This will take care of any items with a future value set in the NoPurgeBefore column. 

To verify this, there are SQL queries you can run.

1. The first thing you will want to do is Locate the Message CheckSum. You can do this by Opening the Message in the Archive Manager website, in the Address Bar you will see a GUID.

For example, CheckSum=fd5bd56f-00c9-d4a9-3b93-14705ab930b8.

2. Take the CheckSum, and open SQL Server Management Studio. 

3. Run the following against the Message Table (query must be run against the Archive Manager database):

Select * FROM message WHERE checksum='fd5bd56f-00c9-d4a9-3b93-14705ab930b8'

4. After you locate that checksum and run the above query, scroll over to the NoPurgeBefore value, the value should have a date of 9999 or anytime well into the future E.g. 2017-10-1.