Describe Microsoft 365 apps and services →hardMultiple Choice

MS-900 Describe Microsoft 365 apps and services Practice Question

A multinational corporation uses Microsoft 365 E5 and wants to implement a retention policy that automatically deletes emails in users' mailboxes after 7 years, except for emails from the legal department which must be retained indefinitely. Which approach should the admin use?

⚠ Common exam trap

Many candidates confuse litigation hold (which preserves everything indefinitely) with a retention label that allows indefinite retention for a subset of items, leading them to choose Option A instead of understanding that litigation hold blocks deletion for all content.

Answer choices

Why each option matters

Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.

Correct answer & explanation

✓

Create a default retention policy for 7 years and use auto-labeling for legal department emails

It uses a retention policy with a 7-year deletion period for all content, then overrides that for legal department emails via auto-labeling with a 'retain indefinitely' label. This ensures that only legal emails are preserved forever while all other emails are automatically purged after 7 years, meeting the compliance requirement without manual intervention.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

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Apply a litigation hold to all mailboxes and a retention policy to delete after 7 years
Why it's wrong here
Litigation hold in Microsoft 365 preserves all mailbox content indefinitely, overriding any deletion or retention policies. A retention policy configured to delete after 7 years is completely neutralized by the hold, so data would never actually be removed. Moreover, applying a blanket hold to every mailbox is unnecessarily broad and blocks required destruction of non-legal data.
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Configure Exchange Online archive policies to move emails after 7 years
Why it's wrong here
Exchange Online archive policies relocate emails older than 7 years to the In-Place Archive, but they do not delete or permanently preserve anything. Archiving simply moves messages out of the primary mailbox, leaving them fully available and subject to existing retention rules. Without explicit retention labels, archived items are not guaranteed indefinite retention for legal department emails—it only shifts storage location, not lifecycle governance.
✓
Create a default retention policy for 7 years and use auto-labeling for legal department emails
Why this is correct
This approach separates retention behaviors by scope: a default Microsoft 365 retention policy enforces deletion of all general mailbox content after 7 years, satisfying systematic destruction. Auto-labeling then identifies legal department emails—using sensitive info types, trainable classifiers, or keywords—and applies a retention label with indefinite retention, which overrides the default deletion policy. The result is a compliant dual outcome: non-legal email is purged on schedule, while legal correspondence is preserved permanently.
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Use Microsoft Purview eDiscovery to manually delete emails after 7 years
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (including Content search) is designed for search, hold, and export during investigations—not for automated or policy-driven deletion. Manually deleting emails through eDiscovery would require repetitive searches, custom scripts, and PowerShell commands to remove results, which is fragile, not auditable, and unworkable at scale. It also conflicts with eDiscovery's role as a preservation tool, making it an inappropriate and non-compliant mechanism for enforcing retention timelines.

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MS-900 Describe Microsoft 365 apps and services Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

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