Forum Discussion
File Plan/Retention Labels cannot be deleted OR found in content explorer
When we try to delete a Purview Records Management > File Plan label (or Data Lifecycle Management > Retention label), we get the following error: "You can't delete this record label because it's currently applied to items in your organization. You can use content explorer to determine which items have this label applied." (see attached image). When we go to content explorer to find the label (in this example, Bank Reconciliations), it doesn't appear to exist (see attached image). We also reviewed our Label policies and Retention policies, and the given labels are not associated with any policy that we can see. So, in result, we cannot clean up File Plan labels since we can't find and remove the association between them and policies / items.
Has anyone encountered this error when deleting file plan retention labels, but then unable to find anything the label is associated with?
We just closed out our ticket with Microsoft. Turns out the reason we cannot delete these labels is either because 1) the label "marks items as records" or because 2) in the "Define the retention period" setting of the label, we used a default event type for "Start the retention period based on". The 3 MS default event types are Employee activity, Expiration or termination of contracts and agreements, and Product lifetime. Apparently, if you choose either of the above settings when creating a retention label, you will not have the option to delete them. Not even Microsoft can delete them.
If you've just recently removed the labels from documents you may have to wait 7-14 days until you can delete it from the File Plan. However, they typically still show up as being applied to documents during the 7-14 day window even though they been removed.
I just removed a few hundred labels from documents throughout our SharePoint environment and deleted them from the File Plan in Dec 2024. Although, I am experiencing the same issue as you for 2 labels. I removed them from the documents (cleared labels) on Jan 2, 2025, waited a while, and they still wont delete from the File Plan as they think they are "still applied to items in your organization". They are also not showing up in Data Explorer or Content Explorer anymore since removing them. I keep trying to delete every few days in hopes it will resolved but I'm not hopeful anymore at this point.
Maybe there was an update to Purview in 2025 that is causing this bug or they are indeed still on documents and not reporting through content/data explorer?
Yes, I have the exact same issue. I was able to successfully remove over a hundred old labels after clearing them off records, and disabling then deleting the associated published label policies (in Dec 2024). However, I have 2 remaining that wont delete and are also not showing up through Data Explorer and Content Explorer. I had cleared the remaining files that had either of these 2 labels on Jan 2nd, 2025 and waited 7-14 days which it typically takes to allow deletion but they are still reporting that "it's currently applied to items in your organization". These 2 labels also don't have any pending dispositions tied to them, although the Disposition section in Purview is a whole other topic with the issues I've experienced there.
I wonder if timing plays a factor here, did they update Purview in Jan 2025 and it broke something potentially?
I just got off a call with Microsoft. Nothing was solved, but we confirmed that in our Dev tenant, we only have 2 Label policies and each of these policies uses 1 File plan label. We also went into Content explorer and searched for the File plan labels and they don't show up in Content explorer. Microsoft just kept saying that the labels must be applied somewhere or else we'd be able to delete them. But if they don't show up in our policies or our explorers, how are we supposed to know where to clear them?
My teammate is looking into a Powershell script that can detect where labels are being used. YachtRock have you tried Powershell yet?I have not tried PowerShell to locate them, in my scenario, I suspect the labels are tagged on documents within users OneDrives (that's my theory). I say this because we had a policy published out to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange at one point but now were just using policies for SharePoint.
I did have a support case open previously and they suggested using an eDiscovery (Premium) case to reindex the content (advanced Indexing) in hopes to clear ghost labels and/or identify the location of the content. I couldn't figure it out right away and honestly forgot about it, might be worth a shot though. Advanced indexing of custodian and non-custodial data sources | Microsoft Learn.
Btw, I just tried this and had no luck finding the labels that are apparently still on documents in our environment. How to search content tagged with a retention label using Purview Content Search | SharePoint Maven
I have used Power Automate previously to locate the default retention label for SharePoint libraries before, however I haven't tried that method with OneDrive accounts and specific files, its probably a little more challenging as it would need to iterate through all users OneDrive's and then each file within their OneDrive.
Any success with the PowerShell?
