How to Clean up a Mailbox or Clean up the Dumpster using Discovery Search in Exchange 2010

Updated – Supports Exchange 2010/2013 and Exchange 2016

Lets say I want to Clean up a Users mailbox completely to have a fresh Start.

We can use Discovery Search to do this task

First Assign the Permissions which is required to use discovery Search – Refer Below link

https://www.azure365pro.com/deleting-a-specific-email-from-entire-organization-in-exchange-2010-2/

I just Created a Test user with Few mails and Few Items in his dumpster

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity "User2" -FolderScope RecoverableItems | Format-Table Name,FolderPath,ItemsInFolder,FolderAndSubfolderSize

Now am doing a search query with a wildcard to query everything and deleting it completely including the archive mailbox

Get-mailbox "User1"| search-mailbox –searchquery "Subject:'*'" –DeleteContent

Caution : Its going to Clean up the Archive Mailbox as well

Use this command for not to include archive

Get-mailbox "User1"| search-mailbox –searchquery "Subject:'*'" –DeleteContent -<em>DoNotIncludeArchive

Use this command to delete Dumpster alone

Get-mailbox "User1"| search-mailbox –searchquery "Subject:'*'" –DeleteContent -<em>SearchDumpsterOnly</em>

Now mailbox is cleaned up completely including the dumpster

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity "user1" -FolderScope RecoverableItems | Format-Table Name,FolderPath,ItemsInFolder,FolderAndSubfolderSize

If you feel its too confusing –  Check out the Automated Script to do these tasks for you

Discovery Search Simplified Script to Delete a Specific Email and other Tasks – Exchange 2010