This is an "update" to my previous post where I posted the link to the less than helpful "technote" that stated that disabling soft-deletes in the 8.x mail files is no longer supported.  A couple of comments on the post, and some other posts asked the question - "so what does this mean?" and I was wondering the same thing, since the "technote" offers no actual technical information aside from a screenshot of the database properties dialog. It would have been nice to include some background information, but since I'm sure the person that knows is busy looking for a job inside IBM or elsewhere, we should cut them some slack.

In my testing of what happens, it appears that the only difference is that the "Delete" toolbar action (the trash can) no longer appears when the soft delete option is disabled. It is replaced with the "X" delete toolbar action item and that the user is prompted that the document(s) will be immediately removed from the mail file.  You should be aware that disabling Soft Deletions in an existing database will result in all currently soft-deleted documents being purged from the database once you change the setting, but you'll get a warning reminding you when you change the setting.

With Soft Deletes:


Without Softdeletes:


This cascades to all other views and folders (based on, or upgraded to, the new template design).  Now, what this means as to "support" from IBM, I guess they'll tell you to re-enable the Soft Deletion setting if you call them with an issue.

Aside from that, in my rather short review of the issue, I don't see anything critical.  For me the bigger issue with regards to soft deletes is, "Why disable them?" With soft deletions, the user has the option to "undelete" something they accidentally deleted, the user isn't interrupted with a dialog when deleting and it just looks, feels and is more elegant and user-friendly.  Using hard deletes is a nuisance to the user.

I'll keep my eye on this, but if, say maybe, the author of the original un-technote wants to update the document with useful information so we know better why it's not supported, that wouldn't be a bad thing either.

PS - Kathleen pinged me to say that the technote in question will be updated soon.