Forum Discussion
Mar 13, 2019
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 label...
- Mar 13, 2019
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
harisgreen
Apr 26, 2026Occasional Reader
I encountered same issue, then I deleted all content of the list and then was able to delete the list.