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Micwats's avatar
Micwats
Copper Contributor
Aug 21, 2025

Office documents receiving second classification

I have recently implemented purview within my organisation and setup the Sensitivity Labels and policies as per guidelines listed in the Australian government secure cloud blueprint. This is includin...
nikkichapple's avatar
nikkichapple
MVP
Aug 22, 2025

Each Microsoft 365 tenant has its own unique set of sensitivity labels, even if multiple organisations follow a shared classification framework such as a national standard. Sensitivity labels are stored as metadata that includes the tenant ID and a label GUID, ensuring that labels are scoped and enforced within the originating tenant.

When a document labelled in Tenant A is shared with a user in Tenant B, the label metadata remains intact. However, unless Tenant B has a label with a matching GUID, the label may not be recognised or enforced. In such cases, the document may appear unlabelled to users in Tenant B, depending on how their label policies are configured.

As a result, Tenant B may prompt the user to apply a label or automatically apply a default label. This can lead to the document containing two sets of label metadata:

    • One from Tenant A (original label)
    • One from Tenant B (new label)

So what you are seeing is what is designed. 

For more information Manage sensitivity labels in Office apps | Microsoft Learn

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