Forum Discussion
Permanently deleting data with Retention Policies
If I understand correctly the above, then the answer is NO. As long as there is at least one label/policy acting on the item with a "retain" action, it cannot be deleted. This is detailed in the "principles or retention" here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/retention-policies#the-principles-of-retention-or-what-takes-precedence
VasilMichev This aligns with what I thought was the case but we have a customer with this requirement for retention and ability to permanently delete asking for a process whereby in this scenario the data can be permanently removed. I suspect there will be a way this can be done by Microsoft at the 'back-end' (hopefully...)
I really doubt Microsoft will touch anything related to customer's data. You already have the tools in place to configure automatic disposal of data as needed, but you will have to get rid of the org-wide retain policy in that specific scenario.
VasilMichev Are you to provide some more detail on what 'get rid of the org-wide retain policy' would entail and what the impact would be? I'm not sure this would be feasible as I think it would remove retention on the rest of the content for which we need to keep the retention applied.
It may be the case that this scenario simply can't be catered for.
Well it will remove retention, but content will remain in place. Meaning you can delete the content you don't want to keep, then re-apply a org-wide or more targeted retention policy. Will definitely be a bit more complicated than just flipping a switch, but there' no other way I can think of.