Good morning, Can anyone tell me if you can apply more than one mailbox manager recipient policy to a user in Exchange 2003? The problem I seem to be having is that I have three policies, one that moves items to the deleted bin after so many days, another that moves items from the deleted bin to the system cleanup, and then the third that deletes the mails from the system cleanup. As you can see I need the seperate policies because each one is performing a different action when the age limit is met so I cannot put it all under one policy. I thought I have read that only one policy can be applied but I am not sure if that is correct or not. I tend to believe it so far seeing that only one policy of the three will apply when I run the mailbox managemenet policy. I have confirmed the filter for all three is exactly the same and tested to insure it is hitting the correct users. Any information will is greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Only the first mailbox manager policy in the list will apply to the user. So, if you have PolicyX and PolicyY (PolicyX is a higher priority)and their criteria would both apply to UserX, only the top priority policy (PolicyX) would apply to UserX. IMHO, this is a weakness in the design, but this is just the way it is. PolicyX will need to do everything for that user that you want it to do. You could create a single policy that moves things to the System Cleanup folder and then also cleans out things that have been in the System Cleanup folder for X number of days. However, Deleted Items do not get moved to the System Cleanup folder.

So even if the search criteria may be different (though the user still comes up for both policies)still only one mailbox management policy will apply and that being the one with the highest priority, am I understanding that correct? Regarding one of your solutions, how would I have a policy that both moves items to the System Cleanup folder and also deletes them from the System Cleanup folder if I can only specify one action per policy? Thanks again.

You are reading my explaination correctly. There are a couple of Q&A's out here that might answer your questions: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/04/18/403819.aspx It is my understanding that if you have a policy that moves items to the System Cleanup folder and then your System Cleanup folder holds things for 30 days, anything that was moved to the System Cleanup folder 30 days ago can be deleted by Mailbox Manager. It would be the same policy for both settings.

Excellent, thank you for your response. I thought you might have meant using the Deleted Items Retention policy built into Exchange to accomplish that, but wanted to be clear on it. Again, thanks for your help.

Glad to be of help!