Exchange Online: Place a hold on a Soft-Deleted mailbox

Scenario: Recently a user has left the organization and you need to place a hold on the Exchange Online mailbox. Currently the mailbox is SoftDeleted (get-mailbox -softdeletedmailbox).

Solution/Scriptlets:
If a Microsoft Security and Compliance case is not already configured, create a one via PowerShell of course! The scriptlets below will create the Compliance Case, Case Hold Policy, and the Case Hold Rule. The Case Hold Policy will group all specified mailboxes to be placed on Hold and the Case Hold Rule will set the entire mailbox on hold.

New-ComplianceCase “InactiveMailboxes_Hold” -Description “This is a hold for mailboxes that are no longer active”

New-CaseHoldPolicy -Case InactiveMailboxes_hold -Name InactiveMailboxes_Hold -ExchangeLocation Steve,Bob -Enabled $true

Note: If the mailboxes are Inactive/SoftDeleted, you may have to place a period in front of the name similar to this command: New-CaseHoldPolicy -Case InactiveMailboxes_hold -Name InactiveMailboxes_Hold -ExchangeLocation .Steve,.Bob -Enabled $true

New-CaseHoldRule -Name InactiveMailboxes_Hold -Policy InactiveMailboxes_hold


If the eDiscovery case is already created and you need to add users, run the following:

set-caseholdpolicy InactiveMailboxes_hold -AddExchangeLocation Jim