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Four Legacy SharePoint Compliance Features to Retire in April 2026
Message center notification MC1211579 (3 January 2026) announces the retirement of several legacy SharePoint (Server) compliance features from SharePoint Online. The features are:
- Information Management Policies.
- In-Place Records Management.
- Document deletion policies (deletion only – part of the SharePoint compliance center).
- Policies for site closure and deletion (deletion only).
Retirement will happen in April 2026. When this happens, users might discover that a feature disappears from the SharePoint Online UX. For instance, Microsoft is likely to remove the option to configure an information management policy setting for a document library (Figure 1). Attempts to get support from Microsoft will be doomed to failure and the removal of configuration options for the features from SharePoint Online will mean that it will no longer be possible to update these options. Finally, background jobs or other processing that support the retired features may (read “will”) stop functioning.
Migrating from SharePoint Compliance to Purview
Of course, none of this will happen immediately and it’s likely that it will take some time before the retired features are finally removed from SharePoint Online, but retirement means retirement and it’s time for tenants to move to a more modern compliance platform, which means Microsoft Purview. In this case, the Purview Data Lifecycle management and Purview Records management solutions.
Microsoft provides some migration guidance here. However, migration is manual and there is no way available to move from the legacy features to Purview.
An Unsurprising Development
It’s unsurprising that Microsoft should move to remove legacy SharePoint Server compliance features from SharePoint Online. Apart from reducing engineering and support effort required to keep the old features in place, the old code is a pale reflection of what Purview is capable of and it’s where any future investment will go. I can’t think of the last time that I saw the soon-to-be-retired features in active use.
Tenants will gain extra functionality through the move. However, licensing might be an issue for some. Unlike the old compliance functionality that’s incorporated into SharePoint and available to all users, Purview Data Lifecycle management requires user accounts to have a minimum of Microsoft 365 Business Premium for manual retention (apply retention labels to files) or Microsoft 365/Office 365 E5 for automatic retention. Records management is an E5 feature.
The same licensing issue arises for Exchange Online, which includes the mailbox retention management (MRM) system spanning mailbox retention policies and retention tags developed for Exchange Server in its base license. Even though Purview Data Lifecycle management lags mailbox retention policies in some respects like the ability to move items to an archive mailbox, adopting Microsoft 365 retention policies can involve additional licensing.
No Room for Old Stuff
Given that SharePoint is approaching its 25th anniversary in 2026, it’s not strange that some old features are still in SharePoint Online. Even though Microsoft has just given the main browser interface a refresh, there are many places where the 2010-2013 style UX (or even earlier) break through if you go looking. As always, the question is whether to spend engineering time on new features or to refresh or rebuild old features.
With Microsoft’s current focus on agents and artificial intelligence (like the new SharePoint list agent described in MC1208689 from 29 December 2025), it seems like the answer is clear, especially for features that are well past their best-by date.
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Expecting organizations to migrate enterprise-level implementations to Purview in just ~3 months feels unrealistic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the April deadline gets pushed once users fully grasp the impact of this.
I guess that depends on how many tenants use the legacy compliance features. My feeling is “not many,” but there’s no doubt that Microsoft has a history of adjusting retirement dates after large tenants discover changes that affect their operations and protest this point to Microsoft.