Frequently Asked Question

Email retention and mailbox management have traditionally been a user-driven task. Legal requirements as well as a need for policy-based management of email resources have driven changes to the way the ACC has to handle email. This document outlines the ACC email retention polices and methods and provides a brief “step-by-step” training for email users.

All email traffic is journaled to an archive to satisfy legal requirements. This means that any email sent through our systems is copied and permanently stored in a separate secure system. This frees us to manage our mailboxes normally while still retaining all email traffic in a way that permits discovery. In short, you do not have to retain items in your mailbox and can delete items as you desire.

Your Inbox does not have a default retention period. This means that items will remain in the inbox until you move or delete them. Other folders have the following retention policies:

• Contacts – kept until manually deleted.
• Calendars – items in calendar folders are kept until deleted.
• Deleted Items – kept for 21 days and then permanently deleted.
• Sent Items – kept until manually deleted.
• Junk Email – items marked as “Junk Email” are kept for 30 days and then deleted.
• “Tagged” Folders and items – users can tag folders and individual items with a retention policy that is different from the default. The “tag” dictates the retention policy.

Pro Tip: The “Deleted Items” folder is not for storing items that you might need later. Create and use folders to categorize items.

See the attached PDF document for instructions on how to manage your email retention policies.