Comparing Search-Mailbox and Compliance Search Actions

Comparing Search-Mailbox and Compliance Search Actions

Table 1 summarizes the functionality available in Search-Mailbox and purges executed with compliance search actions. Both have their unique characteristics: compliance searches are faster and can process more mailboxes in a single operation but are limited to what they can remove from a mailbox. Search-Mailbox can focus on Recoverable Items or ignore a mailbox’s archive, while compliance searches can focus on a single target folder. The biggest difference is that Search-Mailbox can copy items to a target mailbox when it removes them from other mailboxes. You can export items with a compliance search, but you must do this separately and before you remove anything.

Criterion	Search-Mailbox	Compliance Search Action
Number of items that can be removed from a mailbox.	All items are removed from mailboxes that match search query.	Remove up to 10 items per mailbox that match search query.
Number of mailboxes that can be processed in a single run.	Maximum 10,000.	Maximum 50,000.
Speed	Search-Mailbox is single-threaded, so processing multiple mailboxes can take some time.	Multi-threaded distributed work makes content searches more scalable and faster.
GUI to create search criteria.	No	Yes
Process inactive mailboxes	No	Yes
Copy items to another mailbox	Yes	No
Ignore archive mailbox.	Yes	No
Search Recoverable Items only	Yes	No
Search specific folder in mailbox.	No	Yes
Logging only	Yes	No (but preview and statistics are available).

Table 1: Differences between Search-Mailbox and Content Search purges

From an automation perspective, Search-Mailbox is easier to work with because it’s a single cmdlet. The process to remove items with a compliance search involves multiple steps. However, it’s plain sailing once you master those steps.

Table 1 summarizes the functionality available in Search-Mailbox and purges executed with compliance search actions. Both have their unique characteristics: compliance searches are faster and can process more mailboxes in a single operation but are limited to what they can remove from a mailbox. Search-Mailbox can focus on Recoverable Items or ignore a mailbox’s archive, while compliance searches can focus on a single target folder. The biggest difference is that Search-Mailbox can copy items to a target mailbox when it removes them from other mailboxes. You can export items with a compliance search, but you must do this separately and before you remove anything.

Criterion	Search-Mailbox	Compliance Search Action
Number of items that can be removed from a mailbox.	All items are removed from mailboxes that match search query.	Remove up to 10 items per mailbox that match search query.
Number of mailboxes that can be processed in a single run.	Maximum 10,000.	Maximum 50,000.
Speed	Search-Mailbox is single-threaded, so processing multiple mailboxes can take some time.	Multi-threaded distributed work makes content searches more scalable and faster.
GUI to create search criteria.	No	Yes
Process inactive mailboxes	No	Yes
Copy items to another mailbox	Yes	No
Ignore archive mailbox.	Yes	No
Search Recoverable Items only	Yes	No
Search specific folder in mailbox.	No	Yes
Logging only	Yes	No (but preview and statistics are available).

Table 1: Differences between Search-Mailbox and Content Search purges

From an automation perspective, Search-Mailbox is easier to work with because it’s a single cmdlet. The process to remove items with a compliance search involves multiple steps. However, it’s plain sailing once you master those steps.