Retention, legal hold and data export

Compliance permission

Legal holds and eDiscovery can reveal anyone's data, so an administrator needs the Compliance permission as well. The owner always has it and can Grant or Revoke it by email address.

Retention

Retention deletes old data on a schedule, daily. Pick an app (Mail, Chat, Drive files, Docs & Sheets), an optional mail folder, and Keep for (days). Deleted data does not go to Trash and cannot be restored, so always run a Dry run first.

Do it

1. Compliance, Retention, app Mail, folder trash.
2. Keep for (days): 30.
3. Dry run and read Would delete.
4. Save policy only if the count is what you expect.

Legal hold

A hold keeps a copy of anything deleted by the people it covers, in a hidden hold store, and retention skips them. People notice nothing.

1. Legal hold, New hold, name the matter.
2. Choose Covers: People, Mailboxes or The whole workspace.
3. Place hold. It lasts until you Release it.

eDiscovery

Search everyone's mail, chat and files with Search for, dates and People, optionally including the Hold store. Export results builds an archive of up to 1,000 per app.

Data export

Data export makes a full copy: tick apps, choose Export the workspace, and download the ZIP parts before each link expires. The export is kept for a limited time. It holds real data, so store it carefully.

See Retention, legal hold and eDiscovery and Export workspace data.

Recap

• Dry run before any retention policy.
• Holds are invisible to users and override retention.
• Exports expire after a limited time.