How to enable retention policy in office 365?

As an IT admin who's set this up for multiple organizations, here's my step-by-step:Prerequisites: Global Admin or Compliance Admin permissions Understand what data you want to retain/deleteProcess:1. Login to Security & Compliance Center2. Go to Classification > Retention policies3. Click New retention policy4. Choose locations - you can apply to specific sites or all content5. Set retention period (days, months, years) and action (delete, retain, both)6. Review and applyPro tips: Test with a small group first Use retention labels for more granular control Monitor policy reports in Analytics section Remember - retention policies override deletion, so users can't permanently delete covered contentThe Microsoft documentation has detailed guidance for specific scenarios. Policies typically take 1-7 days to fully propagate across all locations.

To enable retention policies in Office 365:1. Go to Microsoft 365 Compliance Center (https://compliance.microsoft.com)2. Navigate to Solutions > Information governance > Retention policies3. Click + Create retention policy4. Name your policy and choose locations (Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams)5. Choose settings - retain or delete content after specified period6. Review and create the policyThe policy will take effect within 24 hours. You can create different policies for different types of content - for example, keep emails for 7 years but delete Teams messages after 1 year. Retention policies help with compliance and data management by automatically handling content lifecycle.