How to prevent ShartPoint from automatically deleting files over 2 years old

Question

I am the network administrator for a small theater. We recently migrated our file shares from a stand-alone server to SharePoint. My users are noticing quite a number of folders with no files in them and when I look at the compliance audit logs i find that the files were deleted by the system account. These deleted files were over 2 years old but contain important history and information that is accessed frequently for current shows.

If I re-migrate the files, they are automatically deleted again.

How do I prevent SharePoint system from automatically purging older files in the file share?

Answer 1

Hello John,

Go to Office 365 admin center>Security & Compliance>Data Governance>Retention, check if there is any related policy to delete the document from the document library.

https://sharepointmaven.com/set-retention-deletion-policies-files-folders-sharepoint/

-Miguel Fra
https://www.falconitservices.com

Answer 2

@John Dwyer ,

From the Microsoft 365 compliance center, select Policies > Retention.

If you have any retention policy, click it to check if there is a related delete item policy.

If your retention policy deletes items, it's important to understand that the time period specified for a retention policy is calculated from the time when the item was created or modified, and not the time since the policy was assigned.

For more information, please refer to:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/create-retention-policies?view=o365-worldwide#settings-for-retaining-and-deleting-content

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