Forum Discussion
SharePoint Online: "List cannot be deleted while on hold or retention policy."
I am trying to help a client clean up some very old lists and sites. However, whenever I try to delete anything, I get the message above. I've checked for an eDiscovery site, for classification labels/policies, DLP policies, and am finding nothing. Any ideas?
We had the same issue and could not find any hold - retention policies in any place. We had to escalate to Microsoft support and they removed the hold on the back-end.
I hope this helps.
Norm
- MMCCOYCopper Contributor
Kelly_Edinger Thanks for posting this. I just ran into this issue when trying to delete a library. Thanks to those who suggested deleting the contents then, in this case, the library.
What is the error?
- Kelly_EdingerBronze Contributor
"List cannot be deleted while on hold or retention policy."
Check the site and list for any hold or retention policies.
- Site Settings > Site Collection Administration > Content Type Policy Templates.
- List Settings > Information management policy settings.
- BrittinatorCopper Contributor
Had all of the issues the users in this thread were experiencing, even after deleting all list items and checking hold and retention policies. The problem was that I had the list still open on Teams, once I closed it I was able to delete with no issues.
TLDR: Make sure the list isn't open when you want to delete. Sharing if that helps anyone!
- Kelly_EdingerBronze Contributor
Hi Brittinator - I have never heard of that being an issue before. Thank you for sharing!