14.1 Publish Retention Labels

A retention label does nothing in Outlook or SharePoint until you publish it. Microsoft documents publishing as the second of two administrator steps: create the retention labels, then include them in a retention label policy whose type is Publish. That policy selects locations—who can see the label—and is what makes the label available to people and to features that require a published label, including library defaults, Outlook folder defaults, Outlook rules, and Microsoft Syntex models.

Why publish instead of a location-wide retention policy

Use a retention policy when every item in a mailbox or site should receive the same retain-or-delete settings. Use retention labels when different items in the same location need different settings, when those settings must travel with the item inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, or when you need label-only capabilities such as starting retention when labeled or when an event occurs, disposition review, or declaring a record.

This section is only about label policies of type Publish. Do not confuse the Publish labels wizard with Retention policies under Data lifecycle management. Microsoft states that Exchange public folders, Skype for Business, Teams messages, and Viva Engage messages do not support retention labels. Those locations are retained or deleted with location-wide retention policies, which the next chapter covers, along with how to recover retained copies.

Microsoft's location table for labels published to admins and end users is Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 Groups. A single retention label can be included in multiple label policies, and a single Publish policy can include multiple of those locations. That many-to-many design is how you reuse a Contracts — 7 years label for Finance mailboxes in one policy and Legal SharePoint sites in another without cloning the label.

Create the Publish policy in the Purview portal

Sign in to the Microsoft Purview portal. The path depends on the solution you are using:

1. Records management: Solutions > Records Management > Policies > Label policies > Publish labels
2. Data lifecycle management: Solutions > Data Lifecycle Management > Policies > Label policies > Publish labels

Before you start, decide adaptive versus static scope. An adaptive scope is a query that runs daily against attributes you specify (for example, a Microsoft Entra job title of Executive). A static scope is all instances of a location, or includes and excludes you list by mailbox, site, or group. If you choose Adaptive, create the scopes first; Microsoft documents that you cannot finish the wizard if no adaptive scopes exist to select. Scope type also gates locations: if you added only a User scope, you can select Exchange email but not SharePoint sites.

On the Assign admin units page, keep the default of Full directory. Microsoft currently documents that admin units are not supported for this policy.

Use the link in the wizard to select the retention labels to publish, then toggle locations. For a static policy you can apply the policy to the entire location or specify includes and excludes. Save carefully: Microsoft states that the policy name cannot be changed after the policy is saved. The same immutability applies to the adaptive-versus-static choice. You can later select the policy (policy type Publish) and choose Edit to change which labels are included and which locations are targeted.

Permissions to create and edit retention labels and their policies are documented separately for records management and for data lifecycle management. Confirm those roles before you start the wizard rather than assuming a generic compliance role is enough.

How long until published labels appear

Plan for Microsoft's published maximum of seven days, even though many tenants see labels sooner.

• SharePoint or OneDrive: labels typically appear for users to select within one day; allow up to seven days.
• Exchange: it can take up to seven days. As with all retention settings for Exchange, the mailbox must contain at least 10 MB of data.

If labels still do not appear after seven days, open the policy on the Label policies page and read Status. When the status includes Error and the location details say deployment is taking longer than expected or to try redeploying, retry distribution from Security & Compliance PowerShell:

• Set-AppRetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity PolicyName -RetryDistribution for Viva Engage user messages, Viva Engage community messages, and Teams private channel messages (pre-migration only)
• Set-RetentionCompliancePolicy -Identity PolicyName -RetryDistribution for other locations such as Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint classic and communication sites, and Teams channel messages

For Exchange specifically, retention labels are made available to end users by a process that runs every seven days. Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell, run Export-MailboxDiagnosticLogs for the user with -ExtendedProperties, load the mailbox log as XML, and filter property names like ELC*. The ELCLastSuccessTimeStamp value (UTC) shows when the system last processed the mailbox. If that timestamp is older than the policy, labels will not appear until the process runs; Microsoft documents forcing processing with Start-ManagedFolderAssistant. If Outlook on the web should already show labels, hard-refresh the browser (CTRL+F5) before you assume the policy failed.

How users and admins apply a published label

Outlook desktop and Outlook on the web display published retention labels alongside any legacy messaging records management (MRM) retention tags assigned to the mailbox. The ribbon control is Assign Policy (look in the Tags group if Assign Policy is not obvious). In Outlook on the web, right-click an item, then Advanced actions > Assign policy. Multi-select works in both clients. Microsoft warns that although the UI still says retention policies, users cannot select your Microsoft 365 retention policies in Outlook apps—they select labels. After a label is applied, the client shows the label at the top of the item and a calculated expiry date.

SharePoint and OneDrive support manual apply in the new experience only, not classic. Select the item (including OneNote files), open the details pane, and choose the retention label from Apply label. You can also apply a label to a list item, folder, or document set. For SharePoint—not OneDrive—you can add a Labels column or an Item is a Record column to a library view so you can see labels at a glance. You cannot filter that view by Item is a Record.

When you publish labels to the Microsoft 365 Groups location, the labels appear in the SharePoint teams site. Microsoft states they are not supported by any email client for group mailboxes. Users can apply the same labels in Teams from the Files tab; the experience matches documents in SharePoint.

Loop pages and Copilot Pages support manually applying published labels that do not mark content as a record or regulatory record. In the Loop app, use the label shield icon and the Retention section. For Loop components inside other apps, and for Copilot Pages, Microsoft documents that you cannot use that shield icon; open the component in the Loop web app, or copy the page link into a browser, then apply the label there.

If you use Microsoft Syntex and publish retention labels to SharePoint locations, you can apply a retention label to a model so identified files are labeled automatically. That path still requires a published policy. Auto-apply policies, covered in the next section, are a different object.

Outlook rules can apply a published label. Create a rule (right-click > Rules > Create Rule > Advanced Options), set conditions, and choose the action that is worded apply retention policy. The picker lists retention labels. That wording mismatch is a frequent exam trap: the action is a label, not a location-wide retention policy.

Default labels versus a label that is merely published

Publishing only makes a label available. A default label is an extra step a site owner or Outlook user takes on a library, folder, or document set so unlabeled items inherit it. Although the same label is applied, each item is retained and deleted separately according to the start-of-retention setting on the label (created, last modified, when labeled, or when an event occurs).

For a SharePoint document library, configure the default on the Library settings page. When you choose the default retention label, you can also apply it to existing items in the library. Inheritance flows to child folders; items inherit from their nearest folder. The default is applied to all new unlabeled items in the container, but Microsoft documents that this does not apply to subsequently migrated files unless you re-apply the default and select Apply to existing items. If you selected apply to existing items, items that are already labeled keep their label unless it was applied by a different default label. If you change the container default, existing labels change only when you selected apply to existing items and those labels were themselves applied by a default label. If you remove the default from the container, items retain their labels. If you move an item with a default retention label from one container to another, the item keeps its existing default label even if the new location has a different default. Only if you then change the default label for the new location can the moved item inherit the current location's default.

Outlook folder defaults are set in the desktop client from folder Properties > Policy, changing Use parent folder policy to the published label. In Outlook on the web, right-click the folder, Assign policy, and make the same change. Unlabeled items in the folder receive the label, and inheritance flows to child folders. Already-labeled items keep their label unless it came from a different default. If you change or remove the Outlook folder default, existing labels on items change or are removed only if those labels were applied by a default. Unlike SharePoint, if you move an item with a default retention label to another folder that has a different default, the item gets the new default. If the destination folder has no default, the old default is removed, except for the documented Deleted Items behavior.

When labels mark items as records or regulatory records, those labels can only be changed or removed manually (and regulatory records are stricter still). Microsoft also states that publishing is supported for all retention label configurations, including regulatory records, whereas auto-apply is not.

If you edit a retention label or a Publish policy that is already applied to content, Microsoft applies the updated settings to that content and to newly identified content. Names, the adaptive-versus-static choice, most retention settings except the retention period, and the option to mark items as a record cannot be changed after the label or policy is created and saved.