MS-900 Describe Microsoft 365 apps and services Practice Question
An organization uses Microsoft 365 and wants to implement a retention policy for all Exchange Online mailboxes that automatically deletes emails older than 7 years, except for emails from the legal department which must be kept for 10 years. What should the administrator configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse litigation hold or preservation lock with retention policies, thinking they can be used to set different retention periods for different groups, when in fact they are designed for preservation (preventing deletion) rather than scheduled deletion with varying durations.
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 two retention policies: one for all mailboxes with 7-year retention, and another for the legal department with 10-year retention using adaptive scopes.
Microsoft 365 retention policies can be scoped using adaptive scopes to apply different retention settings to different groups of users. By creating two policies—one with a 7-year deletion rule for all mailboxes and another with a 10-year deletion rule for the legal department—the administrator meets the requirement without conflicting settings. Adaptive scopes allow dynamic membership based on attributes like department, ensuring the legal department's emails are kept longer while others are deleted after 7 years.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a single retention policy with 7-year retention and apply preservation lock.
Why it's wrong here
A single retention policy with a 7-year retention period applies uniformly to all mailboxes, so it cannot satisfy the separate 10-year requirement for the legal department. Applying a preservation lock would permanently disable any future changes to the policy, which is an irreversible action intended for regulatory compliance, not for a scenario where you need to differentiate retention periods. Because preservation lock prevents deletion of the policy itself, it also blocks you from later adding a separate policy for the legal team, making this option both insufficient and overly restrictive.
- ✗
Configure retention tags in Exchange Online for each mailbox.
Why it's wrong here
Retention tags in Exchange Online are designed for item-level archiving and deletion settings (e.g., moving messages to a personal archive or deleting them after a set time) rather than organization-wide or group-based compliance retention policies. Tags apply to folders or individual items and are typically managed by mailbox owners or admins per mailbox, making them impractical for enforcing a consistent 7-year retention across all mailboxes and a different 10-year retention for the legal department. Additionally, retention tags do not use scopes and cannot dynamically target the legal department based on attributes like department, so they fail to meet the stated requirements in a centralized, auditable way.
- ✗
Place the legal department mailboxes on litigation hold and set a 7-year retention for others.
Why it's wrong here
Placing the legal department mailboxes on litigation hold preserves their content indefinitely with no expiration date, which does not align with the intended 10-year retention period. The other mailboxes with a 7-year retention policy would not be synchronized with the legal department's hold, creating two inconsistent preservation behaviors. Litigation hold is also a hold, not a retention policy, so it cannot coexist cleanly with a finite retention period; once the hold is removed, deleted items may become permanent, and the indefinite nature of the hold makes compliance with a defined 10-year retention schedule impossible.
- ✓
Create two retention policies: one for all mailboxes with 7-year retention, and another for the legal department with 10-year retention using adaptive scopes.
Why this is correct
Creating two retention policies allows you to apply a 7-year retention to all mailboxes and a separate 10-year retention to the legal department, using adaptive scopes to dynamically include mailboxes based on the department attribute. Adaptive scopes let you target users by Microsoft Entra ID properties, such as Department = 'Legal', so the policy automatically applies to current and future legal staff without manual maintenance. When both policies apply to a legal mailbox, Microsoft 365 retains content for the longer period (10 years), satisfying the legal department's requirement while still enforcing the 7-year baseline for everyone else.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Archiving and In-Place Archive in Exchange
Key term
Exchange Online
Exchange Online is Microsoft's cloud-based email, calendar, and contact hosting service that is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, allowing organizations to manage corporate messaging without maintaining their own mail servers.
Key term
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based cloud service from Microsoft that combines productivity tools like Office apps with security, device management, and online storage.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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