SharePoint archiving: select the access model before selecting the storage tier
18 June 2026
Archiving a SharePoint site is a change to access, ownership, recovery, and compliance. Storage cost matters, but it is the last question I ask, not the first.
Begin with a decision record
For each site, document the business purpose, accountable owner, last meaningful activity, external sharing, sensitivity and retention state, eDiscovery considerations, expected retrieval time, and future disposition date. “No recent edits” is a useful signal. It is not an archival decision by itself.
When SharePoint storage grows, investigate retention before deleting files
16 April 2026
Large files are visible. Retention side effects often are not. That is why a storage incident can become a compliance incident when somebody responds by changing a policy before understanding what is preserving the content.
Deletion and storage reclamation are different events
When SharePoint or OneDrive content is retained, Microsoft can preserve the original version in the Preservation Hold library after a user edits or deletes it. The user may see a file disappear while the tenant still retains a copy. Microsoft explains the workload-specific behaviour in retention for SharePoint and OneDrive.