[UPDATED January 2026] This post is a running list of questions I’ve received since 2020 on Purview Retention Policies (NOT Retention labels) in SharePoint and OneDrive and my answers.
Note: My answers apply to both SharePoint and OneDrive sites equally although in my answers I just say “SharePoint”. Also, when I say SharePoint, I mean any type of SharePoint site: Communication site, Group-backed Team site, non-group-backed Team site, Classic site. The only exception is subsite which I explicitly call out in several questions.
Microsoft documentation: Automatically retain or delete content with a retention policy
The questions in no particular order, just as they were asked of me…
Q1: What content is retained by a Retention policy on a SharePoint site?
Answer: documents (all file types) from all libraries on the site, including files in the site assetslibrary. In my experience, although pages in the site pages library will be included for a retention policy that has a “retain” component on it, any “delete” action will not be taken. This means changes to pages will be retained in the Preservation Hold Library for the retention period.
Only files are retained, not folders or libraries. The “before copies” of file changes and files that are deleted are stored at the root of a special system library on the site called the Preservation Hold Library (PHL) for the retention period.
To make file names unique in the library, a GUID is appended to each file name.
Q2: When a retention policy is applied to a site and content is deleted on the site by an end-user before the retention period has been reached, does it go into the recycle bin?
Answer: Yes. The end-user is allowed to delete content – it will automatically go into the SharePoint site’s first-stage recycle bin as normal and will follow Recycle bin processing from that point. However, due to the retention policy applied to the site, a copy of the deleted content will also go into the Preservation Hold Library on the site for the duration of the retention period.
Q3: Does an end-user know that a retention policy has been applied to the site?
Answer: Usually no, but there are a few exceptions.
#1 – if you attempt to delete a folder that has content in it, you will see this message:
#2 – if you attempt to delete a library on the site, you will receive the error messages below:
Q4: When does content retained in the Preservation Hold Library (PHL) get deleted?
Answer: The timing is controlled by a back-end Purview timer job whose schedule you have no insight into. If the retention period has elapsed for an item in the PHL, it is automatically moved to the second-stage recycle bin (not visible to anyone but a site collection admin) where it will be permanently deleted after 93 days.
Q5: If a Retention Policy has been configured to retain and ‘Do Nothing’, what happens to content in the PHL after the retention period?
Answer: The back-end Purview timer job will delete the content out of the PHL during its clean-up process. Other content on the site will no longer be under retention control. (It can be manually deleted if desired)
Q6: Can I see the Preservation Hold Library in Site Contents in a site?
Answer: No. A site collection administrator will not be able to see the PHL in Site Contents on a site; however, they do have permission to the library and so can navigate directly to it at the URL below:
- PHL on a site: ~/sites/<sitename>/preservationholdlibrary
- PHL on a subsite: ~/sites/<sitename>/<subsitename>/preservationholdlibrary
Q7: What is the best way to find content that is being retained by a Retention policy?
Answer: Purview Content Search and eDiscovery search are the administrative tools to help you verify what’s being retained as it includes content from the PHL. This is used to satisfy any regulatory requests/legal holds/legal searches your organization may have.
Q8: Will Microsoft search return results from the Preservation Hold library?
Answer: No. Even though a site collection administrator has access to the PHL and can navigate directly to it, its content will not be returned in a search from the Microsoft search bar. You must use one of the administrative search options (previous question) to see results from the PHL.
Q9: Can I use the Preservation Hold library as a backup for my site?
Answer: No. This is not a point-in-time snapshot of a site’s content. It is capturing all changes and deletions made to content across the site by a retention policy set to retain.
Note: the PHL contains other content as well. See next question and answer for more information.
Q10: Does space consumed by the Preservation Hold library count toward my Site Collection storage quota?
Answer: Yes. The PHL space is included in the storage consumed by the Site Collection it’s in. This is something you must take into consideration for site planning as long-duration retention policies (common) can consume a significant amount of storage over time.
Note: in addition to a retention policy applied to a SharePoint or OneDrive site, there are several other Purview features that also use the Preservation Hold library for preserving content:
- eDiscovery hold targeting a SharePoint or OneDrive site
- Auto-apply label to cloud attachments
- Record retention label applied to content on a SharePoint or OneDrive site
- Tenant level setting allowing users to delete labeled content
- Deleted content from an Elevated risk user (Adaptive protection feature of Insider Risk Management)
All of these features must be planned for and taken into consideration as part of your long-term retention and site architecture strategy due to this PHL dependency.
Q11: Can a retention policy be applied to one subsite?
Answer: No. Retention policies are applied to SharePoint sites (the parent site collection). You cannot apply it to a specific subsite within. (another reason not to use subsites)
Q12: Will a retention policy apply to the subsites I may have under my parent site (collection)?
Answer: Yes. If a retention policy is applied to a site, it will automatically also apply to any subsites that may be under the parent site. In that scenario, a separate PHL will be automatically created in each subsite. The downside of subsites from a retention perspective is they are included in the overall site collection storage quota, including the PHLs across all subsites.
Q13: Can I know in advance when content will be deleted if a Retention Policy is applied to it?
Answer: No. (Other than knowing the settings of the retention policy and looking at either the created date or last modified date of the content on the site, but that is a manual check)
Q14: Can I automatically review content that has a retention policy applied to it before it is deleted (so I can potentially change my mind about deleting it)?
Answer: No. A Disposition Review is only allowed on content that is being retained with a Retention label. A retention policy that automatically deletes content at the end of the retention period is indiscriminate… it applies to all content in the site (refer to Q1 answer).
Content deleted via a Retention policy will automatically go to the second-stage recycle bin on the site for 93 days and will then be permanently deleted.
Q15: Can I have a Retention label and a Retention Policy published to the same location?
Answer: Yes. If an item in the location has a retention label applied to it and a retention policy is also applied to the same location (site), the principles of retention are enforced (image). These principles determine how long an item is retained for and at what point it can be deleted. There is no way to circumvent these principles EXCEPT if there’s an eDiscovery hold on the same location. If that is the case, all deletion activities from either a retention policy or label are halted until the hold is released.
- Link: Principles of Retention and what takes precedence
- Microsoft’s flowchart to validate your retention setup: Retention flowchart
Q16: When a Retention Policy is published to Microsoft Teams channel messages, does it apply to all standard, private, and shared channel messages for the Team?
Answer: Yes. When you publish a retention policy to Teams channel messages, all standard, shared and private channels’ messages under the same parent team will inherit the retention policy settings.
Note: this is a change in behaviour for private channel messages.
Migration of private channel messages in 2025.
Q17: When a Retention Policy is published to a Microsoft Teams SharePoint site, does it apply to standard, private, and shared channel files within the Team?
Answer: No. You need to specify multiple SharePoint sites (each for the channel it relates to) for the retention policy:
- The main SharePoint site backing the Microsoft Teams to include all standard channel content stored in SharePoint.
- The SharePoint site URL for EACH private channel’s site collection to include each private channel’s content stored in SharePoint.
- The SharePoint site URL for EACH shared channel’s site collection to include each shared channel’s content stored in SharePoint.
Q18: Is there any way to delete content on a site that is under retention due to a Retention Policy?
Answer: Yes. In Public Preview (as of January 2026), there is a secure workflow feature called Priority cleanup that will allow you to bypass retention policies (and legal holds) in SharePoint, OneDrive (and Exchange) to allow permanent deletion of content from SharePoint and OneDrive before the retention (or hold) duration expires. There are multiple levels of policy approvals, specific roles assigned, and auditing activities logged.
It’s important to know that this feature will supersede the principles of retention!!
Links:
- Priority cleanup for Exchange: Expedite deletions from mailboxes
- Priority cleanup for SharePoint/OneDrive: Override holds for files in SharePoint/OneDrive
Q19: What is the impact of a retention policy applied to a site and the version history settings? Will the versions still expire based on the version history settings?
Answer: No. A retention policy (with a retain configuration) applied to a site will always override any version history limits you may have in place for libraries on the site. Until the retention period has been met, no versions will be deleted which may result in more versions being retained than your configured limit.
The versioning limit for the document library is ignored. This exemption continues until the retention period of the document is reached (based on the retention policy period). The trim job (Purview timer job that trims existing versions in a library) will stamp an expiration date on the version instead of deleting it if it is subject to a retention policy. Once the expiration date is reached, if the retention policy is still in effect for the version, the expiration date is extended; otherwise, the version is deleted.
Note: an eDiscovery hold will also ignore the version history limits while the hold is in effect on the site.
Link: Version storage behavior
Thanks for reading. 🙂
-JCK
Hi Joanne. Very helpful as usual. I’m wondering what happens to items in the PHL where the retention policy is retain and then ‘do nothing’. In which case, are the items automatically deleted from the PHL at the end of the retention? Also, as a Group Owner and thereby site collection administrator I believe I can access the PHL and retrieve items, say that were inadvertently deleted by a user. I have done this using views including the original location column. Actually, it would be really helpful to search the PHL so I’m surprised this doesn’t work for me as Group Owner even though I can access the PHL. BTW I found your ‘what’s in it for me’ article for Ignite 2018 most informative. Are you preparing similar for Ignite 2019? Many thanks.
Hi Keith,
In answer to your first question, if a retention policy is for retention with ‘do nothing’ at the end of the retention period, the PHL is cleared out.
The decision to allow a Group Owner to see the PHL in the Site Contents but not in Search is something you’ll have to ask the Microsoft engineering team. 🙂
Thanks for the feedback on the Ignite 2018 presentation. If I can get some cycles, I will try and put something together for 2019 – I had a lot of positive feedback on it and helped to look at the announcements thru a different lens.
Thanks!
-JCK
Hi Keith – another follow-up. If you add yourself as an explicit Site Collection Administrator you will be able to search and return results within the PHL. My preference would be for a Group Owner to not see it in the Site Contents nor be able to return the results in search and have that capability only available to an explicitly-named SCA. Interacting with the PHL is an administrative function and “most” Group Owners won’t understand the purpose of this library and it shouldn’t be treated like a regular library.
-JCK
Hi,
Do you know about a workaround for deleting retention labels marked as a record? The labels themselves seem to be protected so they cannot be edited or deleted as soon as the ‘mark as record’ box is checked. I can delete the policy, but it would be good to be able to remove labels used for testing.
Hi Eliz, No workaround. There is currently no way to remove them, even thru PowerShell. They are there forever.
I don’t know if Microsoft is planning on adding capabilities for that, but it’s not there today.
-JCK
I am confused by your answer If a Retention Policy has been configured to retain and ‘Do Nothing’, what happens to content in the PHL after the retention period?
Answer: The back-end timer job will delete the content out of the PHL during it’s clean-up process.
The info panel next to the “No” tick box on the question “Do you want us to delete it after this time” it seems it just sits there forever and it becomes manually deletable..
Perhaps your “Do Nothing” option is a different setting…
Hi Carl,
In this scenario, any content in the PHL will go thru the clean-up process to be deleted after the retention period is complete. The content in the SharePoint site won’t be deleted, just the PHL content. The content in the SharePoint site will remain after the retention period since no instruction was sent to delete it. The content can be manually deleted after that or left in place since there will be no retention policy retaining it anymore. Keep in mind, depending on the retention policy settings, if you were to modify a document and you were basing the retention on ‘last modified’, then retention would start all over again for that document.
Hopefully this clarified my answer.
-JCK
Looks like we can apply a retention policy via outlook rule to filter down to specific emails via the gui. But I don’t see a powershell command like set-retentionpolicy or new-inboxrule that supports this. Am I missing something?
Hi JD,
Those are not the retention policies published thru the S&C Center. They are Exchange retention policies (ootb) and any Retention Labels you have published to your Exchange environment – end-users can manually apply one of those Retention Labels to an email. I’ve never configured retention policies using an Outlook rule and instead prefer to use the central repository of retention policies in the S&C to publish to exchange since these same policies can ALSO be published to other workloads (SharePoint, OneDrive). There are numerous PowerShell cmdlets for that, however I don’t know what’s available for what you’re trying to do.
Hopefully that clears up the difference.
-JCK
I created the labels in S&C and then published the policy to Exchange. I think the reason I’m stuck using these retention policies in rules is because of the need to filter on emails with attachments and in the sent folder which outlook marks as a client side only rule. The thing I’m failing to find is a way to auto apply with this level of granularity. Thank you for your input!
We are using broad retention policy for the purpose of clean up / content deletion (ex: delete 3 years after last modified) AND we are using retention labels to mark selected content with a longer more defined file plan label (ex: keep these documents for 8 years). We have some worried folks who want a simple way to “see that content will be / just was “deleted by the retention policy” as they may have missed marking it with a defined retention label. Any suggestions on how best to reveal this information, routinely to end users, or possibly to group / site owners?
Hi Joanne,
I have nearly the same question: how can I see what will be deleted when using retention policies? I thought there should be an activity in the audit log when a file “gets free” but there is nothing.
Worst case scenario would be a search on e.g. sharepoint for files 1 month newer than the policy period or a bit better creating a powerautomate flow for the search and filling a list that can be used for an approval workflow.
Any better hints how to accomplish that (except of using retention labels with disposition review)
Hi Thilo,
There is no easy way to get a list of what’s about to be deleted using a retention policy with a ‘delete’ action. In the future, there may be ways to be able to see this thru the UI, but right now I’m not aware of a great way of doing this. At the moment, a retention label with disposition review is the easiest way if you require an approval of the disposition.
-JCK
Hi,
We have setup a “Forever” retention policy in Office 365 covering SharePoint and OneDrive files. Does this mean that we can retrieve any file that was ever created in SharePoint or OneDrive? even files from user accounts that have been deleted?
Thanks for any advice.
Hi Antony, Yes. If there’s a retention policy on a user’s OneDrive and they leave, their OneDrive SharePoint site will NOT be deleted due to the retention policy. It will still be discoverable by an eDiscovery or Content Search.
-JCK
Hi Jo, really helpful article, thanks! Does the GUID remain the same for a document that is in the recycle bin and the PSL copy?
Hi A Copland, if by PSL you mean PHL (Preservation Hold Library) then they are completely separate documents (it’s a copy) so the GUID would be different.
-JCK
Absolutely meant PHL, sorry. Thanks for the quick response!
Hi Joanne-
What happens when you restore a file that has been deleted by a retention label or policy? Does the that file’s label or policy get excluded the next time the job runs? Does the label or policy get reapplied?
Thanks,
Matt
Hu Matt, I’ll have to do some testing to be able to definitively answer each question above. This will take some time.
I would say if you restored a file and it still had the retention label on it, the next time the backend process runs, it will delete it again. On the retention policy side, if you only restored it and didn’t modify it once restored, i *think* it would delete it the next time the backend process runs.
-JCK
Is it possible to exempt file extension from the Retention, e.g. Video files, Image files, that would use a lot of storage and might not be relevant e.g. for an investigation?
Hi Franck,
You could do it by having an auto-apply condition in the retention policy or label policy that excluded the filetypes you wanted… you would put “NOT filetype:aspx” (without the quotes) in your condition. THis is the only way I believe you could automatically exclude them. Similarly, you can use this syntax to perform a search against content.
-JCK
Hi Joanne,
great post btw 🙂
A question regarding Teams and Retention Policies:
Lets assume you have a retention policy that contains “Groups” as scope with 1 Year retention based on the modified date. So all Teams / Groups Mailboxes and SPO Sites (even the Private Channels) are protected by the Retention Policy. What happens now if you delete the Team?
1. Will the SPO Site collection(s) be kept until the last items modified date retention expires and then deleted on a Site Collection level?
2. Will the SPO Site collection(s) be kept forever and only the content will be kept until the 1 year expires?
Will access to the SPO Site be prevented after the Teams has been deleted?
Hi Daniel,
If you delete a team whose content is under a retention policy, the following will happen:
1. It will be removed from the Teams UI and so end-users will no longer see it there
2. The Office 365 Group backing the Team will be in the ‘Deleted Groups’ and will be deleted after 30 days ( I believe)
3. The site collection will remain in tact (you will still be able to browse to it) and the content within it will be kept for the duration of the retention period. The site collection will not be deleted assuming you will still have the retention policy published to the Group. If you navigate to the SP Admin Center, there will be a message on the Site Collection stating “The site has a compliance policy set to block deletion”.
I would recommend trying this yourself by setting up a test with a “Test” team.
-JCK
Hi Joanne
I’m getting a different experience when the Office 365 Group is permanently deleted (say using the admin centre) having applied retention policies to the specified Teams (channels) and Office 365 Group (but not SharePoint sites) and a retention label policy to the Office 365 Group.
Firstly, as an owner of the Office 365 Group, I get ‘access denied’ to the site collection when trying to browse to it.
Secondly, the retention policies do not protect the site collections associated with the private channels. I get a ‘404 error’ when trying to browse to it.
Please can confirm this is correct and, if so, what should we do to get / continue having browse (or any) access to the site(s)?
Thanks
Keith
Hi Keith,
To be honest, I don’t feel comfortable providing guidance on your specific scenario. There’s way too many variables at play for me to assist thru this channel. To be clear, I have not done extensive testing on deleting Teams, Groups, etc. on sites that have retention policies enabled on them and particularly with those Teams that *also* have private channels. On the Team I did delete, for the time being I’m still able to directly access the SP site, however I’m not sure what will happen once the Group gets deleted after the 30 days. I’m assuming in your case the Team was deleted in error? My first reaction would be to try and restore the Group (however if you’ve permanently deleted it, that may not be an option in your case). I’d advise talking to Microsoft about next steps as they will be able to help troubleshoot. Sorry I can’t help you more.
-JCK
Hi Joanne
Apologies for the complex scenario. Please could you update this post when your Office 365 Group is permanently deleted (either through the admin centre or after 30 days) to say whether you can browse to / access the site. It undermines the value of applying retention policies if the site and its content becomes inaccessible when its Office 365 Group / Teams is (permanently) deleted.
Thank you
Keith
Hi Keith,
Until I’ve tested it extensively, I’m uncomfortable putting anything in that post on what will exactly happen if content that is under retention has its Group/Team deleted. I’m tempted to put something in there like “please do not delete a Group/Team if there is a retention policy in effect for it”. In your opinion is this a reasonable thing to expect? i.e. a Retention policy would assume there is content that needs to be kept and that content is kept in the container being deleted. I’m not sure what the correct back-end behavior should be – perhaps not allow it to be deleted in the first place? Just throwing out ideas.
-JCK
Hi Joanne
I think it reasonable to expect a retention policy applied to a specific Office 365 Group to preserve the group and its associated site, and a retention policy applied to a specific Teams (channels) to preserve the teams and its associated group and site or sites, say if the teams has some private channels. Perhaps this is on user voice?
In the meantime, keep the number of owners to a minimum and train them, remove the ability for teams members to create private channels, and do not permanently delete Office 365 Groups in less than 30 days, so mistakes can be corrected. For example, I’ve seen an owner mistakenly ‘delete the team’ when the meant to ‘hide’ it.
Keith
hi Joanne – quick question as you have recommended using “NOT filetype:” in the advanced settings of a retention policy. does this mean that “NOT FileExtension:” could also be used? Is there an advantage to using one over the other? We’re trying to ensure that the PHL does not become cluttered with temp files so ideally i’d like to use “NOT FileExtension:TMP” – Thanks
Hi Anthony,
Never tried it but according to this documentation it should work: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/keyword-queries-and-search-conditions?view=o365-worldwide#searchable-site-properties
Give it a try and reply back how it goes!
-JCK
Hi Joanne,
quick question: I apply a Retention Label to all Office 365 Groups for a duration of 10 Years. Then I create a new Team and this gets the Retention Policy so the SPO Sites content is under retention for 10 Years. When will the site collection be deleted:
1. Never
2. After the last document in the site collection hits the 10 years retention limit
Thank you
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
You’re potentially referring to 2 types of retention so I just want to clarify… a retention label gets published to a Group and then the granular content within the site can optionally have that label applied (either users can set it manually on a document or it can be automatically set (if you have the license to do so)). For clarity, let’s call that type of policy a “Retention label policy”. Your second reference of “Retention Policy” is a retention model where everything in the container is under a retention and the end-user is unaware it is there.
In either case, the container (site collection) will NEVER be deleted at the end of the 10 years. Retention applies to the granular items: documents, emails, etc. and not the container they live in.
Hope that helps.
-JCK
Hi Joanne,
I wanted to check with you if you have faced the scenario described below and if yes, is there a way to get out of it?
Scenario:
I have defined a retention policy on SharePoint Online sites to retain content for 10 years and after the retention period is complete, delete the files – ‘Delete Only’ policy. Now, I have a site which has migrated content which dates back to 1997 and I have noticed that all the files older than 10 years are getting deleted by the retention policy.
Is there any way to stop this?
I tried the following approaches, but the file deletion is still in progress:
1. I updated the policy from ‘Delete-Only’ mode to ‘Retain-Only’ mode. I used PowerShell for this because the web interface of Office 365 Security & Compliance Center does not allow this change.
2. Since step #1 did not work, I excluded the site from the retention policy, but even then the deletion is still in progress.
P.S: There are around 100,000 files on this site.
Hi Vinod,
The retention policy is doing exactly what it was configured to do by the sounds of it. If you’re looking to restore this content, i would open up a ticket with Microsoft on the proper course of action. I’m not comfortable advising you on this.
-JCK
Hi Joanne,
If an F1/F3 onedrive user under ‘S&C keep forever onedrive retention’ consumed all available space (2GB).. then deleted all 2GB from onedrive and recycle bin.. should that free up 2GB of space for that user? So far it seems that retention is preventing that 2GB of data from being deleted from the hidden preservation hold area.. which is not allowing the user to add anymore data… even though the user does not see any files in onedrive (looks empty).
Thanks,
Phil
Hi Phillip, I’ve never ran into this but it makes sense. The PHL does contribute to the storage quota so if it’s reached 2GB for the site and that’s your quota, it’s full. If you are required to keep the “retain forever” then you will have to give the user more space in his OD site.
-JCK
Hello Joanne, I have a retention policy that says retain Teams channel chats for 5 years and then delete. Say, I go apply a label to a specific O365 group that says ‘if the label is applied to a group, delete it within 1 day from when its applied’. Are the Team channel chats still e-Discoverable once group gets deleted?
What I need to happen is, at some point I go delete the group. I just want teams chats to be gone as well and not be e-Discoverable.
Hello Joanne, we have a retention policy in place for Teams channel messages like this: Retain for 5 years and delete. We have another scenario where we have to get rid of channel messages asap, say, once I delete the O365 group.
Given the retention policy in place, is it even possible to achieve this? I was hoping I can add a label ‘explicitly’ to a group/team/mailbox. The label says: Delete tagged content in 1 day of application. But looks like I cannot add a label to those ‘containers’.
Hi crs,
Couple of things:
– because you have a retention policy applied to Teams channel messages, you need to address this before deleting the group. You should exclude the Team you’re about to delete from the retention policy. This will take awhile to take effect (i.e. it’s not immediate). Only after that, should you delete it.
– you can’t apply a retention label to a group/team/mailbox
– I would challenge your initial retention policy requirement if you’re allowed to delete the content prior to the retention period ending in the other ‘scenario’ you describe. Is this an exception? If so, you will have to have a workaround like I mentioned above.
Hope this helps.
-JCK
Has anyone successfully applied a retention policy to a private channel, and seen the Preservation Hold Library appear in the site contents?
Hi ALS, yes I have.
-JCK
Hi Joanne,
Is it possible to have a Sensitive Info Type (containing Keywords), which can automatically apply both Sensitivity & Retention labels when the keyword is found.
Regards,
Matt
Hi Matt, they’re configured in different areas of the Compliance Admin Center but individually yes you can.
-JCK
Hi Joanne,
I have a OneDrive requirement that files must be deleted from OneDrive via a retention policy if the “Last Modified” date is older than 90 days.
Question 1: To achieve this I would setup a retention policy for OneDrive only?
Select “No, just delete content that’s older than:
90 Days
Delete the content based on: When it was last modified.
Question 2: When a file is deleted via the retention policy above does it go into the first or second stage recycle bin, PHL or is it permanently deleted?
Question 3: If a user copies a file from a network share with a last modified date older than 90 days is that file flagged for deletion (assuming the retention policy above is in place)?
E.g. I copied a file with a “Date Modified” of 12/22/2014 to OneDrive. I did notice a “Date Created” column of the one drive file says the date I copied it to OneDrive. Maybe does it evaluate this date as well?
Just trying to avoid users copying older content to work on in OneDrive and the retention policy deleting it immediately.
I’ve been trying to mock this scenario up in my own M365 environment but retention policies can take up to a week before they kick in (Makes it challenging to work with and see the outcomes of settings).
Please delete my previous Reply and use this one.
Thank you in advance!
Stephan
Hi Stephan, I’ve decided to answer your questions in the form of a blog post as I have limited time, I want to expand the reach of the answers. It is scheduled for publish on Monday morning (August 24). Please watch for it – hopefully it’s answered all of your questions. 🙂
-JCK
Thank you so much Joanne! Much appreciated!
When you apply a retention policy to a existing site, does it apply to items that are already in the recycle bin?
Hi JL, I don’t believe so.
If retention policies on the tenant are not there, does that only impact data that is in the recycle bin?
Hi Madhuri, I don’t understand the question. Can you please elaborate?
Hello Joanne,
I am exploring record management feature of Office 365. How “Do nothing” option work with Record? After completing retention period will record switch to the normal document?
Hi Vivek,
I’m not 100% sure of the behavior. I will run a test and confirm when I have a few cycles. If, in the meantime, you want to run a test, I’d appreciate you letting me know!
-Joanne
Hi Joanne,
Consider the following document:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/create-retention-policies?view=o365-worldwide
Can you please explain the difference between the following retention policies?
choice A is when you select the “Retention for a specific period” https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/create-retention-policies?view=o365-worldwide#retaining-content-for-a-specific-period-of-time
, and choice B is when “Delete items when they reach a certain age” https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/create-retention-policies?view=o365-worldwide#deleting-content-thats-older-than-a-specific-age
when testing these two choices, the end result before submitting the policy to be enabled is one of the following:
Retention settings- Choice A
Retain items for 7 years based on when they were last modified
Delete items at end of retention period
OR
Retention settings – Choice B
Delete items that are older than 7 years based on when they were last modified
Delete items at end of retention period.
An example would be super useful.
– Mark Farzan
Hi, I’m really interested in hearing the answer to his question, was it ever established?
To me it seems as though Choice A would capture items in the background for 7 years if they were manually deleted by a user, but for Choice B a user could delete the items earlier and they wouldn’t be retained for the 7 years (but anything 7 years and older would be auto deleted) – is that right?
Thank you
Yep, thats correct. The delete policy is the “anti-retention”, kill everything that is older than.
Hello Nikki (and the original reply Mark) – apologies for missing this question from back in June!
My answer…
If both Choice A and Choice B were published to the same location… following the ‘Principles of Retention’… retention ALWAYS wins over deletion so, in effect, the the Retention Policy configured to only Delete after 7 years (Choice B) would be ignored.
Therefore, all content would be retained for 7 years and then deleted. If you deleted content prior to the end of 7 years, it would be preserved in the PHL for SharePoint (or the Recoverable Items Partition for Exchange if it’s been published to EXO) because the Retention Policy from Choice A is in effect.
If ONLY Choice B’s retention policy was published to a site, then a user could absolutely delete a file prior to 7 years as there is no retention component in effect for the item. Content would be automatically deleted 7 years past the last modified date.
For more examples, please refer to my “Principles of Retention” fun challenge: https://joannecklein.com/2021/07/05/principles-of-retention-in-microsoft-365/
-JCK
Hi Joanne, Thanks for putting up this Q&A, this is very helpful.
We have a retention policy to delete the OneDrive content “If it is not modified since 7 years”. This is a global policy which applied to entire organization. Now, I have around 5000 onedrive accounts that need to be excluded from this policy and I have PowerShell script to exclude.
Do we have any limitation on number of OneDrive locations to be excluded from a retention policy? and what is the suggested approach to achieve this.
Thanks
Purna
HI Purna, this is the quick answer (a longer one would require a consulting engagement): you have 2 options:
Option 1 (static scope): sounds like this is what you’re about to do. You have to script it and your script must take into account a maximum number of sites excluded per policy of 100.
Option 2 (adaptive scope): Use an adaptive scope to identify the 5000 accounts you want to exclude, or conversely the remaining ones you want to include. There is no limit to the number of sites that are included/excluded on this. Adaptive scopes are currently in Private Preview in the Commercial cloud.
-JCK
Thank you Joanne for quick reply.
For first option, say for example, can we create 50 retention policies with same condition to include “ALL” and exclude 100 policies for each policy.? Like
RetentionPolicy1 to include “ALL” and exclude 1-100 sites
RetentionPolicy2 to include “ALL” and exclude 101-200 sites
——————————————————————————-
RetentionPolicy50 to include “ALL” and exclude 4900-500 sites
Will this work or any impact like when retention engine executing/running second policy will impact the first policy in any means since 1-100 sites were included as “ALL” in Second policy .?
Hi!
Maybe a stupid question, but have been reading documentation for a week and it is not clear to me.
I want to use a retention policy scoped for OneDrive and Exchange Online.
This was required for users that are leaving the company, to preserve their data for 5years after account is deleted.
Now, we don’t want to delete any data after 5years if the employee is still working, that would be crazy to tell them “hey, your plans and stuff from 5y ago are now gone ..”
Will the retention policy delete both ‘deleted’ AND ‘active’ users data after 5y ?
If so, is there another way to retain stuff only for deleted accounts? (after leaving)
Thank you!
Hello ITMP,
This is something you will likely want to leverage the new (coming soon) Adaptive Scope feature for.
High-level approach I would take if it was me (in case it helps):
1. You will need a way to identify ‘departed’ users in an automated way. (a custom attribute in AD on their User object perhaps)
2. Create an adaptive scope to include only departed users (referencing the above custom attribute)
3. Create a retention label, “Departed User” that would retain for 5 years after “date labeled”.
4. Create an auto-apply retention label policy using the above adaptive scope and retention label. Auto-apply the label on all of their emails and OneDrive files. (Size>0) I’m currently testing this.
Without adaptive scopes, you could use a static scope, but it would not be as automated because someone would have to manually add in all of the departed employees into the policy.
Note: you can’t use a retention policy because you want the content retained for 5 years after they depart. The only 2 date options available to use are ‘date created’ and ‘date last modified’ on a retention policy which it sounds like wouldn’t work for you. “Date labeled” is only available with a retention label.
That’s my free advice… 🙂
Please check out this webinar by Microsoft to get a demo of Adaptive scopes (coming to all tenants next week): https://mipc.eventbuilder.com/event/45703
Hope this helps!
-JCK
Thank you for your time and advice.
I did know the adaptive scope is coming, but there were voices that you need E5 license, and we don’t.
Also, users are cloud only, no local AD.
So my assumption was correct, that if we apply a ‘retain&delete’ for 5years, if a user is still active after 5years, his older data will start to be deleted.
The non-automated policy is ok. So adding users to the policy before deleting the user would work well for us.
I also want so use the “inactive mailbox” feature in place of converting to shared mailbox that we do now.
Q: If users are added to an already existing policy, and 5minutes later are deleted, does the policy kicks in?
Thank you again.
Hi,
It would be best to wait for the updated retention policy to be in an “enabled (success)” state before deleting the user. Please test this for your own edification. PowerShell will likely be the way to go on that one.
-joannecklein@nexnovus.com
Also I need to clarify… sounds like you’re planning on using a retention policy so if you set it to retain for 5 years then delete it will look at either the creation date or modified date of the content for that user to do that. It won’t retain the content for 5 years past them leaving.
Hi Joanne, great blog!
I was testing retention policy with ‘forever’ retention time for a couple of months. I did de-activate the retention policy and would now like to remove the ~400GB Preservation Hold Library within OneDrive of on one of the accounts .
After some hours of online search, I get the impression that I painted myself into a corner.
– Is there a way to delete a ‘forever’ Preservation Hold Library in OneDrive?
– Could you recommend a practical workaround (e.g. Removing the Office-License from the user account? Remove and re-create the user account? etc.)
Thx
– Schorsch
Hi,
I’ve not tested this scenario so please don’t trust my advice without testing. To my knowledge, you should absolutely be able to delete that library (or at least the content within) once the Retention Policy “deactivation” is complete. Have you waited long enough for that to happen? Test by making sure nothing new is being added in the PHL for changes/deletions.
If it is truly deactivated, then I’m afraid I don’t have any kind of a workaround. This sounds like a bug to me and I would definitely log this with Microsoft.
I don’t have any other helpful advice to give.
-JCK
Hi Joanne, what about a hybrid Exchange configuration with mailboxes still onprem? Can I use my online defined retention labels or policies for these?
Hi Joanne
I have 2 questions regarding the PHL in SharePoint. In both scenarios I am using retention labels that DO NOT mark items as record, with the configuration set to ‘trigger a disposition review’:
1. If a file with a retention label whose retention period is based on an ‘event’ gets deleted before an event is created for that file, will it remain in PHL forever (since no label event date was specified) or will the deletion date act as the ‘label event date’ for that file?
2. Do files in the PHL come up for disposition reviews, or do they simply wait out the retention period and then clear out of the PHL, skipping the review since they’ve already been deleted?
As always, your insight is appreciated!
Michael
Hi Joanne, thanks for writing up a great post and following up with all the queries by the community. The post is almost 4 years old and its still very relevant today!
I have a problem with having deleted users OneDrive accounts being retained indefinitely after its retention period due to “do nothing” config at the end of the hold duration, and am wondering if you can advise.
My current retention policy is set for 6-months, with a “do nothing” at the end of the duration. When a user get deleted, the files are retained for 6 months since the last modified date, and at the end of 6 months, the files are still present. You mentioned in the earlier posts that the purview timer would ‘kick-in’, but in my scenario, it doesn’t seem like it as I am able to still ‘see’ the files via Defender for Cloud Apps (MDCA) file policy results.
We’ve checked in with MSFT CSS team (with ACE guidance), and it seems that the behavior of the retention policy is such that after the hold period ends, it would not kick-start the timers that was initially set to run on the files (depending on where they are).
Would love to hear your thoughts, or if you have any advise on how to remove these unwanted files (beyond its retention limit) on the tenant, for those users who have left the org.
Hi, the “Purview timer” would clean up any retained content that is sitting in the OneDrive accounts’ preservation hold library, NOT the files sitting in the live library because of the ‘Do Nothing’ setting. Since you have the ‘Do Nothing’ configured at the end of it, the files will still remain in the OneDrive main files library. This begs the question why you don’t have the setting as “automatically delete” after 6 months if that is your desired end-state. I may be misunderstanding your question though.
-Joanne
Thanks for the quick response Joanne!
I was informed by CSS that the option to automatically delete would remove active users’ files that aren’t found in the recycle bins, and that’d be disastrous.
My objective was to protect files for 6 months even if they are deleted by users and emptied from the bins, and I applied retention hold for that purpose. This resulted in retaining deleted users’ files beyond its expiration (after 6 months) upon previous employees’ departure.
Do you have any suggestions or advise on how I might be able to address the objective?
Side qns: would deletion of files constitute as a file modification?
(scenario, I created and modified a word doc on 1-Jan-2024, and in July (after 6 months have passed), I deleted it. Qns: would the retention hold of 6 months kicked in again upon deletion, or would it stay in the bins for 93 days before its purged?
I have more questions about your objective, but since this isn’t a consulting engagement, I’m going to make a few assumptions and answer the question based on that.
I would create 2 User Adaptive scopes: 1 for Active users, 1 for Inactive users.
Use the Active User adaptive scope to apply your retention policy (you use the words “retention hold” which isn’t a thing so I’m assuming you mean “retention policy”) to retain for 6 months then ‘do nothing’. This will ensure any deleted content will be preserved in the OD PHL.
Then, use the Inactive User Adaptive scope to apply your retention policy to only the inactive users and configure that one to “Retain for 6 months then automatically delete”.
A user will be in 1 of the 2 scopes so you can have different retention rules for each.
I would test this first in a non-production tenant to make sure it does what you want it to.
I don’t believe a delete action constitutes as a file modification. It would go thru the recycle bin process. The retention criteria of “6 months past last modified” will have been met so I don’t believe it will be copied into the PHL. I think there will be a bit of a delay in that process (i.e., it may not happen on exactly 1-Jul-2024)
Hope this helped.
-JCK
Thanks for the quick response!
I was informed by CSS that if I activate “automatically delete” after 6 months, the system would delete users’ files which aren’t found in the deleted items too.
My business objective is to retain files in OneDrive for active users for 6 months if they deleted the files and emptied both bins. Should users leave the org, files (onedrive and its bins) should be retained for 6 months as well before its purged out of the system.
My issue right now is the files are still around 6 months after users leave the org.
Any suggestions on how I might be able to ‘hold’ files just for 6 months?
Side point, from your experience on purview, would deleting a file constitute as modifying it?
(scenario, I created the file abc.docx on 1-Jan-24, and inserted content. It’d be retained for 6mths based on 1-Jan as my modified date. On 1-Jul-24 (6mth passed), i proceed to delete it.
qns: would the retention hold counter repeat for another 6mths, or would it only stay for 93 days between 2 bins?
Hi Joanne,
1)
Scenario:
Site Retention policy: Retain for 7 years based on created date, no deletion action
SharePoint library Retention label: Retain for 1 year based on created date, review, delete
( I shortened the retention periods for testing purposes)
What I am finding in testing is that when the retention label’s retention period has been met on an item in that library, I get an email notification for a disposition review and the disposition is actionable even though the retention period of the 7 year retention policy has not been met. Is this the expected behavior?
If this is indeed the expected behavior, can I assume that once I approve disposition, the item will disappear from the library (may take up to 15 days), move to the first-stage recycle bin and then on to the 2nd stage recycle bin, and a copy will be kept in the preservation hold library to meet its 7 year retention?
2) When I go to the compliance details of any item in this same library, under the Retention Stages heading it reads “This item is not subject to a retention policy.” I assumed that it would say “The item is subject to a retention policy.” It threw me off. Is it because of the term “item” and that retention policies are not actually attached to individual items?
By the way, I truly enjoy your posts and continue to learn so much. Thanks! 🙂
Hi JoAnne,
I should have mentioned in my scenario above that the labels are auto-applied using a KQL including a content type and RefinableDate where the date is <=today. We have another scenario on that same site using document sets and auto-applied labels. The only labels that are getting applied are for document sets that have a longer retention period for the label than its site (retention) policy. The docs sets that didn't get labeled remain that way after the site retention policy has been reached. So two different behaviors. Can you help me to understand these behaviors and why the difference between the first scenario and the second (that uses doc sets)? Thanks.
Hi Beverly,
I don’t understand the setup enough to answer and I have limited cycles to dig into this. An auto-apply label policy works against documents, not the document set itself. In addition, the auto-apply label policy will NOT check to see if a retention policy is also applied to a site and decide not to apply a label because of it. It would apply the label (assuming the condition was met) and then the next time the back-end Purview service looked at the content, it would take action on the files based on the retention label and retention policies in effect for it following the principles of retention.
Hope that helped. 🙂
-Joanne
Hi Beverly,
This is in response to your first question from a week ago.
1) This is the expected behavior. The labeled items will go thru the disposition review process as if a retention policy didn’t exist on the site. Once they are approved for deletion, they will be deleted from the site by a back-end process (may take up to ~15 days) at which time they will be copied into the PHL and will also go into the second-stage recycle bin (not the first) where they will stay for 93 days. BY the way, the same process will happen if the site is part of an eDiscovery hold as well.
2) The ‘Compliance details’ is a leftover legacy pop-up (from the in-place RM days) that I never use anymore. It won’t show any kind of retention policy that may be in effect and I’m not sure the dates in there can be trusted. (I don’t know that for sure). I believe that Microsoft is working on showing a document’s date expiry in a more modern way in the UI, but I don’t know the ETA on that. That will likely also only be for retention labels. This is speculation on my part on how Microsoft will actually build it though.
Hope that helps.
-Joanne
I’m trying to create Retention Policy for Teams chats and copilot interactions .
What If I create a Policy ‘A’ to delete chats for all 1-1 users in the Organization and create Policy ‘B’ to retain chats for group of users. How the both policies works together ?
I can create a Policy ‘A’ and exclude the list of users will solve my problem. But there is no way to add M365 group in the exclude list. Hence thinking about an other policy .
Hi! Please review the principles of retention for your scenario. Since retention wins over deletion, the users you have in (both) Policy A and Policy B will have their chats retained for the period of time you define. They will not be deleted since retention wins over deletion.
Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/retention?tabs=table-overriden#the-principles-of-retention-or-what-takes-precedence
-Joanne
Thanks for the update
Hi Joanne,
Please can you help me with a quick question. Can the data lifecycle management capability, specifically regarding the data retention and deletion labels. Can these labels be applied to data sources outside of the Microsoft ecosystem? For example, if you have on-premise databases, can you apply the retention labels to those data sources? Thank you.
Hi Nerika, no they cannot. Unlike sensitivity labels, a retention label can only be applied to content within Microsoft 365 locations.
-Joanne
Hi Joanne, is there a way to have a retention policy that’s only invoked when a SharePoint file is opened?
Hi Angela, no there isn’t. I’m curious on your use-case for that.
Are we able to apply multiple retention policies for Private channels based on the requirements given below 1.apply private channels policy for SharePoint sites with managed path as sites , retention period as 12 months 2.apply private channels policy for SharePoint teams managed path, retention period as 6 months. 3. Exclude some m365 groups and private channels from both the above policies 1 and 2
Hi Joanne, would like to circle back to my earlier qns –
My business objective is to retain files in OneDrive for active users for 6 months if they deleted the files and emptied both bins. When users leave the org, files (onedrive and its bins) should be retained for 6 months as well before its purged out of the system.
My issue right now is the files are still around 6 months after users leave the org. Any suggestions on how I might be able to retain files only for 6 months pls?
Hi Joanne,
I really need your guidance. We have an organization that wants to apply a 3-year default retention from the last modified date and delete after that: across the board on their entire SharePoint. I Know we can do this via static policy, but this deletes the Site Assets / Style library files as well. How do I exclude those or not have them affected by the retention policy or by using an Adaptive Scope
Hi Joanne, any update on this please?
Hi,
You can’t exclude them if you use a retention policy. You could default a retention label on the document library(s) that would be set to retain for a period and then automatically delete. In this scenario, you control the library locations in scope.
-Joanne
Hi,
We manage data regulated under GDPR legislation in Europe and need a retention solution in SharePoint. Our goal is to use retention labels to notify specific individuals two years after data is uploaded.
Here’s the approach we attempted: We set up a retention label with the “Retain for a specific period” option. At the end of the period, a Power Automate flow initiates to send a notification.
We encountered some challenges: We need users to be able to delete labeled data if necessary before the two-year period ends. However, with this setup, deleted items are retained in the PHL, which we want to avoid.
Additionally, using the “Delete items when they reach a certain age” setting lacks the Power Automate action, but it allows relabeling to another label that triggers a flow within one day. This solution seems not ideal.
Is there a recommended way to achieve our goal of notifying specific people after two years while allowing for early deletion without moving items to the PHL?
Hi Arthur, it sounds like you are testing all of the right methods. Another option for you is to set the tenant level setting to ‘disallow deleting labeled content’ which would allow end-users to remove the retention label from the document first before deleting the file. (it would have to be a non-record label for this though or else they wouldn’t be able to remove the label). If you had the tenant-level setting set to this, then the end-user would be forced to remove the label if they needed to delete the file. Nothing would be put in the PHL in this scenario. You could then call your Power Automate flow at the end of the retention if you wanted.
Not sure if that addresses all of your requirements.
-Joanne
Hi Joanna, this addresses my question completely, thank you for the insights.
Hi Joanne,
I’m having trouble finding a clear answer on this matter: When using the ‘Relabel’ action with a retention label, you can choose a replacement label from the list. However, this list includes labels that haven’t been published to the same locations as the original label. Will the ‘Relabel’ action work if the replacement label isn’t published to the same location? For instance, if Label 1 is published to a specific SharePoint site but Label 2 is not, even though the configuration allows selecting Label 2 in the ‘Relabel’ action, will Label 2 be successfully applied when the action is executed?
In meanwhile I have found that it is possible to use a replacement label without it being published to the location where it will be applied
Hi Arthur, I was running an additional test to confirm as well before responding. 🙂 I didn’t think it was required as it works similar to an auto-apply label where you don’t need the label to first be published to the site before auto-applying it… however, I’ve learned not to assume anything. Glad you were able to confirm it and thank you so much for replying back on the question. I really appreciate it.
Hi – i imagine many people (including me) are removing or at least reducing retention policies around OneDrive data given the upcoming changes in charging in Jan 2025.
I have completely deleted our OneDrive retention policy and will be reducing the retention periods soon.
One question hit me today though – given that the sharepoint report is still showing all OneDrive data deletion is being blocked by retention policy – does deleting the policy remove the retention? or does it simply not apply yo any new object… but the existing objects are still retained forever until they are updated with a different retention policy ? (hope that makes sense)
Hi Ben,
Deleting the retention policy will remove the retention on any OD locations it was previously applied to. Although, there are processes in the back-end before that change is reflected across your OneDrive sites. I haven’t tested that recently and don’t know how long that is. You should be able to check those OneDrive sites in the Policy Lookup page in Purview too to see if you still see them there.
Also, if there are any retention labels applied to content in your user’s OneDrive sites, that would also block a OneDrive from being deleted even without a retention policy.
Hi Joanne, in this scenario where there is say a file in OneDrive with a retention label of say 10 years yet no Retention policy on the OneDrive, you’re saying that the OneDrive won’t be deleted? Do you know if it will delete all other content on the OneDrive apart from the labeled files?
Similar question for SharePoint sites. If I have a 2 year retention policy on the sites to delete after last activity, but some files are labelled with a 10 year retention label. What happens? Does the retention policy remove all content other than the files labeled with keep for 10 years?