To delete messages, you have to be a member of the Organization Management role group or be assigned the Search And Purge management role. To create and run a Content Search, you have to be a member of the eDiscovery Manager role group or be assigned the Compliance Search management role. What do you need to know before you begin? To learn more about single item recovery, see Single item recovery. To learn more about In-Place Hold and Litigation Hold, see In-Place Hold and Litigation Hold in Exchange Online. In this case, you need to perform more detailed steps to clean up the Recoverable Items folder.

If the mailbox is placed on In-Place Hold, Litigation Hold, or another type of hold in Microsoft 365 or Office 365, or if single item recovery is enabled, you'll want to preserve the mailbox data until the hold is removed or single item recovery is disabled. After items are deleted, you can't use single item recovery to recover them. If a mailbox isn't placed on In-Place Hold, Litigation Hold, or another type of hold in Microsoft 365 or Office 365, or if a mailbox doesn't have single item recovery enabled, you can delete items from the Recoverable Items folder. How you clean up or delete items from a user's Recoverable Items folder depends on whether the mailbox is placed on In-Place Hold or Litigation Hold, or had single item recovery enabled: The Recoverable Items folder (known in earlier versions of Exchange as the dumpster) exists to protect from accidental or malicious deletions and to facilitate discovery efforts commonly undertaken before or during litigation or investigations. They are no longer available in the new Exchange admin center. Please refer to the Microsoft 365 security center and the Microsoft Purview compliance portal for Exchange security and compliance features.

O365 cleanup tool