does file retention save all versions from deleted users in OneDrive?

[Mark Butler]

Like many public entities we must save all versions of all documents for multiple years. Even if someone deletes the document.

I get really conflicting information from Microsoft on this. OneDrive for Business retention documents talk about sharepoint settings and site collections (link) but make no distinction between what applies to SharePoint online and the mini-version of sharepoint that OneDriveForBusiness is.

the discussion on this site (link) talks about configuring a Information Policy but it only applies to SharePoint-Online and again, doesn't make  distinction. For example, there is no "Go to Settings, Site Settings" when talking about thousands of OneDriveForBusiness drives. Plus Information Policies are only available for some document types.

And I cannot find any mention of version retention in any of the documents. I hope someone can help me.

Basically I have 2 questions:

1) if a person deletes a file from their personal OneDriveForBusiness drive, as long as they still have an active account are all versions of that file still searchable with the Security and Compliance Center? even if it was deleted years ago?

2) From what I read, the only process that will work is to never delete a user as years later I may need to pull up versions of documents from their individual OneDriveForBusiness drives. Is this what everyone does?

Mark Butler

Technology Coordinator

Lynden School District

[#2]

You'll be able to restore versions of up to 30 days ago. You can put the ODfB drive(s) on hold to work around this limitation; those won't be accessible for regular end users, only from compliance center etc. by people with the proper permissions to perform such searches.

[#3]

Thank you for the reply. It is as I suspected. So we will never be able to delete a user.