Retention Policies
Common Use Cases
- Organization-wide baseline: retain all SharePoint and OneDrive content for a set number of years so nothing disappears prematurely
- Regulated industries: meet financial, healthcare, or government retention mandates across every site without touching individual files
- Storage hygiene: delete-only policies that clear out content untouched for years, keeping sites lean
- Departing employees: keep OneDrive files available after an employee leaves, instead of losing them when the account is removed
- Teams and group sites: blanket the sites behind Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups so shared files follow the same rules
- Litigation readiness: preserve content across targeted sites without alerting users or changing how they work
Benefits
- Set and forget: one policy silently governs every item in scope, including content created years from now
- Invisible to users: no labels to apply, no training, no change to how people work day to day
- Automatic coverage of new sites: adaptive scopes pull in newly created sites that match the query, with no manual updates
- Guaranteed preservation: retained content survives user deletions, library deletions, and even attempts to delete the site itself
- Pairs with labels: the policy sets the floor while retention labels handle item-level exceptions and records
- Defensible compliance: consistent, documented rules across locations stand up better in audits than ad hoc practices
How It Works
- Location-based assignment: a policy targets SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, Microsoft 365 Groups, Exchange mailboxes, or Teams content
- Retain, delete, or both: a policy can keep content for a period, delete it when the period ends, or simply delete anything older than a threshold
- Preservation Hold Library: when users edit or delete retained content, SharePoint keeps a copy in this hidden library until the retention period expires
- Static or adaptive scope: static scopes list specific sites, while adaptive scopes use a query so matching sites join and leave the policy automatically
- Retention clock: the period runs from when content was created or when it was last modified, whichever trigger the policy specifies
- Rollout timing: a new or changed policy can take up to seven days to take effect across all covered locations
Limits and Nuances
- 100-site ceiling for static scopes: a single policy can include up to 100 specific SharePoint sites; adaptive scopes have no such per-policy cap
- Principles of retention: when settings conflict, retention wins over deletion, the longest retention period wins, and explicit labels beat implicit policies
- No record declaration: policies cannot mark content as records; that capability belongs to retention labels
- Storage still counts: copies in the Preservation Hold Library consume the site’s storage quota, which can grow noticeably under long retention
- Sites resist deletion: a site covered by a retention policy cannot be deleted until the policy no longer applies to it
- Preservation Lock is one-way: once locked, a policy can be extended or given more locations, but it cannot be shortened, disabled, or removed
- Teams is separate: retention for Teams chats and channel messages lives in its own policy, distinct from the policy covering the SharePoint files behind Teams
Common Questions About Retention Policies
What is a retention policy in SharePoint?
A retention policy is a Microsoft Purview rule applied to entire locations, such as SharePoint sites or OneDrive accounts, that automatically retains content, deletes it after a set period, or both. Every item in the covered location is included without anyone tagging anything. It is the standard way to enforce a consistent content lifecycle across an organization.
Where does content go when it is deleted under retention?
If a retention policy is still retaining the content, the deletion succeeds on the surface but a copy moves to the Preservation Hold Library, a hidden library in the site visible to site collection administrators. The copy remains there until the retention period ends, after which it is permanently removed through a staged cleanup process. Users never see any of this happen.
What happens when a retention policy and a retention label conflict?
Purview resolves conflicts with its principles of retention. Retention always wins over deletion, so content is never destroyed while any setting says keep it. The longest retention period wins. Explicit settings beat implicit ones, so an item-level label outranks a site-wide policy. And when only deletion settings compete, the shortest period applies. The net effect: content stays as long as anything requires.
How many SharePoint sites can one retention policy cover?
A policy using a static scope can include up to 100 specific SharePoint sites. Organizations that need broader or self-maintaining coverage use adaptive scopes, which define membership with a query against site properties, so matching sites join automatically and there is no per-policy site cap. An org-wide policy that covers all sites is also an option.
Can users tell that a retention policy applies to their site?
No. Retention policies are deliberately invisible: there is no marker on files, no label column, and no change to everyday editing or deleting. People work normally while SharePoint preserves copies behind the scenes. The policy only becomes visible to site collection administrators, who can see the Preservation Hold Library, and to anyone who tries to delete a covered site.
How should an organization get started with retention policies?
Start with a simple org-wide baseline, such as retain everything for a defined number of years, then layer retention labels onto the libraries that need exceptions or records. That is the sequence Greg Zelfond follows on LookBook 365 deployments, using nothing beyond out-of-the-box Microsoft Purview. A modest, documented policy that actually ships beats an elaborate file plan that never does.