= Distributed James Server &mdash; deletedMessageVault.properties
:navtitle: deletedMessageVault.properties

Deleted Messages Vault is the component in charge of retaining messages before they are going to be deleted.
Messages stored in the Deleted Messages Vault could be deleted after exceeding their retentionPeriod (explained below).
It also supports to restore or export messages matching with defined criteria in
xref:operate/webadmin.adoc#_deleted_messages_vault[WebAdmin deleted messages vault document] by using
xref:operate/webadmin.adoc#_deleted_messages_vault[WebAdmin endpoints].

== Deleted Messages Vault Configuration

To make James use DeletedMessageVault, you need to configure the PreDeletionHook for it.

How to do this is documented in the xref:configure/listeners.adoc[*listeners.xml*]
Mailbox Listener Configuration page.

The Deleted Messages Vault also stores and manages deleted messages into a BlobStore. The BlobStore can be either
based on an object storage or on Cassandra. For configuring the BlobStore the vault will use, you can look at
xref:configure/blobstore.adoc[*blobstore.properties*] BlobStore Configuration section.

== deletedMessageVault.properties

Consult this link:https://github.com/apache/james-project/blob/master/server/apps/distributed-app/sample-configuration/deletedMessageVault.properties[example]
to get some examples and hints.

.deletedMessageVault.properties content
|===
| Property name | explanation

| retentionPeriod
| Deleted messages stored in the Deleted Messages Vault are expired after this period (default: 1 year). It can be expressed in *y* years, *d* days, *h* hours, ...

| restoreLocation
| Messages restored from the Deleted Messages Vault are placed in a mailbox with this name (default: ``Restored-Messages``). The mailbox will be created if it does not exist yet.
|===
