Retention policy on SPO - stop file deletion which is in progress.

Hi,

I have defined a retention policy on SharePoint Online 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.