Forum Discussion
Retention Policies and SharePoint sites
We have five year retention policies covering almost everything, including Teams. When a site is deleted, e.g. by deleting a team, all files contained in the site are retained. But what about the site (including lists etc.)?
If a user wants to recover a site (after 30 days in the recycle bin has passed), is it only the files that can be recovered? If so, is it possible to identify which files were stored in the site?
The reason why you put Office 365 Groups on retention is to ensure that the content in all the resources owned by the group is kept for a certain period.
When a group passes 30 days post-deletion, the Azure Active Directory object that represents the group is removed. This effectively breaks the link that ties all the group resources together. At the same time, instructions go to the associated workloads (like SharePoint and Exchange) to say that the group no longer exists. The workloads then check whether any retention holds exist. If they do, the content is held until the hold elapses. If not, the content is removed using the workload's normal processing (for instance, the mailbox is cleaned up by the Exchange Mailbox Folder Assistant).
Content under retention can always be accessed by a content search and export.
51 Replies
- If you set the sharepoint retention for a certain point of time on the site (team) afaik the site or lists with content can’t be deleted
Also see the following post:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365/Remove-a-Sharepoint-Site-on-Preservation-Hold/td-p/21196
AdamThanks, Adam.
I can see that sites belonging to teams that I have deleted are still present in the SPO Adminstration portal and it is marked with"This site has a compliance policy set to block deletion". But when I try to access such a site, I am denied access both a the owner and as admin (Global Administrator). So how do I gain access?
