SharePoint Online: How to Exclude a Site from eDiscovery Hold?

Requirement: Exclude a site from the eDiscovery hold policy in SharePoint Online.

How to remove a SharePoint Online Site from eDiscovery Hold?

When a SharePoint Online site is placed under eDiscovery hold, it prevents you from deleting the site or renaming its URL, prevents bulk deletes, and blocks a few more operations. In such scenarios, you must exclude the site from hold policies to perform operations such as delete. Here is how to exclude a site from the eDiscovery hold policy:

1. Login to Microsoft 365 admin center >> Open the Security & Compliance Admin Center (If you don’t find it, click on “All Admin Centers” on the left side menu and open the “Security” link)
2. Expand the eDiscovery node in the left navigation, and click on the “Open” button in the hold policy created for your environment. This Opens the eDiscovery Policy in a new tab. 

   

3. Click on the “Holds” tab in policy settings >> Double-click on the policy name to open its properties and click on the “Edit hold” button.

   

4. Go to the “Locations” tab, click on “Choose sites” under “SharePoint Sites”. 

   

5. This lists all sites under hold policy. Click on the little X button next to the site you want to remove from hold and click on the “Done” button to save your changes. Hit the save button again on the hold settings page.

   

6. Wait for the status to change from “Pending” to “Success” (Takes between 10 Minutes to 24 Hours!).

Now, try to delete or rename the site, it should proceed without any errors this time! Excluding a site from retention policy is explained in another article: How to Remove a Site from Retention Policy in SharePoint Online?