Validate if an Exchange Retention Policy is applied to a mailbox item

Scenario:  You have applied a Exchange Retention Policy to a mailbox and the mailbox items that you expected to delete, may not be deleting right away.

To see if a mailbox item has a retention policy applied, perform the following:

1. Open MFCMAPI

2. Connect to your Outlook Profile via Session-->Logon.

3. Open your mailbox by right clicking your displayname and choose Open Store.

4. Expand out the Root Container --> Top of Information Store.

5. Right click on the mail folder that should have the retention applied and Open Contents Table.

6. Locate an email and find the PR_RETENTION_DATE Property.  The value should contain the date for when the retention will process on the item.

This may tell you the date for when the item may be deleted.  If you believe the retention policy is not getting applied, you could adjust the work cycle by extending it from 1 day to 3 days.  The work cycle is a background process that is throttled, therefore may not be able to get to all the mailboxes in a single days work cycle.