what about this? disable the archive, export to pst, delete the archive, re-enable the mailbox for archiving, import the pst

if you cant delete the archive then when you reenable the mailbox for archiving what you do is click the button called "deselect archive" and instead of reassociating the mailbox with the old archive, it will create a new one.

I think it really comes down to a user education bit at this point, because whats to say that she won't just end up having the same issue later where she insists deleted items be deleted? you have a centera in governance mode which is there for an absolute reason.

And if you use discovery accelerator and they end up doing searches, she's going to have duplicates all over the place, plus when you re-import the PST files, you're now going to have more items that will take even longer to expire

and even if you did create a second archive, she will still see her old archive and the deleted items etc...

But if i absolutely had to do it, i would probably zap the mailbox to remove all the hidden messages and that would set her to be a "new mailbox", delete the ExchangeMailboxEntry record for her, rename the old archive to something like "OLD-Archive [usersname]" and then run provisioning then re-enable the user....

That in theory should create a new archive for her

Good morning folks, hope you had a good weekend. Thank you for your replies

JesusWept, I hear you - I wish I could educate users, but some people just won't be helped. Particularly, those that have some authority, and choose to leverage it. Shame really, but that's people for you

Thanks you to both, I'll look to try both and come back an mark which one provided the solution, shortly

Many thanks