Script to set retention tag on default folder items updated to v1.1.1

Articles in the "Retention tag on default folder items" series

  1. Use EWS to apply retention policy to items in a default folder
  2. Script to set retention tag on default folder items updated to v1.1.1 [This article]
  3. Default folder retention tag script updated to 1.3
  4. Updated script that applies retention tag to items in a default folder

When running v1.0 of the script in a folder with lots of items, it would keep stopping with no errors, but there were more items to process. I found that this was happening when the number of items to process changes because a new item was added to the folder. In other words, while processing deleted items and another item is added to the Deleted Items folder, the total number of items changes, resulting in Exchange not returning the next set of items correctly. v1.1 correctly accounts for this condition.

Additionally, I found that calendar items in the Deleted Items folder cannot be processed with the API. Trying to change any property returns an error that it can’t update calendar items that are already deleted. But since you can manually assign a tag to it in Outlook, I consider it a bug that you can’t update calendar items in the Deleted Items folder. So, I updated the search filter to exclude calendar items when not searching in the Calendar folder (processing meeting responses is okay; it is only appointment/meeting items that are affected).

You can now choose the default folder to process. If you don’t specify one, the Deleted Items folder is selected. I included all default folders that can have a retention policy tag assigned AND have a well-known folder ID. This means that you can’t use the script to process items in the Clutter or RSS Feeds folders. If you are interested in having the script work against those folders, let me know and I will add the code necessary to do so.

Download the updated version below. (The inline code of the first post has been updated, too.)

  Set-DefaultFolderItemsTag.ps1 (9.4 KiB)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*