SharePoint Compliance Features to Be Retired in 2026 – All You Need to Know
With several compliance and data lifecycle management policies being retired in SharePoint Online, Conall O’Kane, Modern Workplace Practice Manager at Storm, breaks down what the changes mean for your business, and how you can prepare your SharePoint for what’s to come.
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Microsoft has confirmed that several of SharePoint Online’s legacy compliance and lifecycle management features will be retired in April 2026, marking a significant change in how businesses will manage retention, records, and lifecycle compliance across their SharePoint estates going forward. From April, the below features will no longer be available in SharePoint Online and will likely disappear from the user interface.
Information management policies - Traditional policy frameworks and rules for retention, classification, and auditing.
Policies for site deletion – Policies defining the lifecycle of a SharePoint site.
In-place records management – Ability to manage records on any site.
Document deletion policies – Automated deletion of a document after a specified period based on set criteria.
What Does This Mean for Your Business?
Once these tools are retired, support will also be discontinued, potentially leaving your business data exposed to compliance and security risk. Microsoft has emphasised that there will be no automatic migration of existing configurations, so users must proactively transition their policies and procedures. Organisations still relying on these tools should prepare now to avoid gaps in compliance and data governance later.
Businesses should consider integrating a tool like Microsoft Purview to replace these legacy features. Purview is a unified compliance platform that offers a more scalable, flexible, and comprehensive compliance framework that aligns with current enterprise requirements, regulatory expectations, and hybrid data environments.
To ensure organisations avoid any gaps in SharePoint governance and compliance, Microsoft recommends that organisations adopt:
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management – For retention, deletion, and disposition of Microsoft 365 content.
Microsoft Purview Records Management – For controlled declaration, preservation, and management of records across the organisation.
This approach will enable SharePoint users to centralise compliance controls across Microsoft 365 workloads and provides richer capabilities for retention labels, automatic and intelligent retention policies, and audit-ready reporting. These solutions essentially deliver more advanced and flexible compliance controls that align with cross-platform governance strategies, offering better visibility and automation compared to the legacy tools.
What You Should Do Next
If your organisation currently uses any of the retiring SharePoint Online compliance features, you must begin planning your transition before April 2026.
To ensure a smooth migration to Purview, your business should:
Audit Current Setup: Document all legacy SharePoint compliance and lifecycle policies in use.
Understand Purview Capabilities: Map existing requirements to Purview Data Lifecycle and Records Management solutions.
Plan Your Migration: Develop your migration strategy, establish timelines, and include a testing schedule.
Evaluate Licensing: Confirm whether your current Microsoft 365 plan supports the necessary Purview features.
Prepare Your Team: Ensure that compliance, records management, and IT teams understand how to configure and operate within the Purview compliance ecosystem.
The deprecation of legacy SharePoint Online compliance tools in April 2026 represents a strategic pivot toward a unified, scalable compliance framework through Microsoft Purview. By understanding the changes ahead and strategically planning migration efforts, organisations can ensure they retain full compliance capabilities while benefiting from modernised data lifecycle and records management controls.
If you would like assistance in assessing your environment or planning your Purview migration, get in touch with a member of our team today.
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