The ability to manage records on any site gives record managers more control over how business and legal records with a long term value are handled. Managing records “in place” also enables these records to be part of a collaborative workspace, living alongside other documents you are working on.
Depending on the organizational structure of your records management solution, you can activate in place records management at the site collection level and you can further disable manual declaration of records at the list or library level. The default for lists and libraries, however, is that the manual declaration of records is enabled when the feature is activated at the site collection level.
Note: In SharePoint Online, we've introduced the Microsoft 365 Records Management solution in Compliance Centerwhich lets you use retention labels to declare content as records, which effectively replaces the need to use the Records Center or in-place records management features. If you're using the Records Center, you can continue to use it alongside retention labels. But moving forward, for the purpose of records management, we recommend using the Compliance Center solution instead of the Records Center.
Activate in place records management in SharePoint
If not already done, you need to activate in place records management before you can do these tasks. If you have activated it, skip these steps.
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Navigate to the top level site.
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Click Settings
In a SharePoint group-connected site, click Settings, click Site Contents, and then click Site Settings.
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Under Site Collection Administration, click Site collection features.
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In Site collection features, find In Place Records Management and click Activate.
Configure in place records management for a site collection
If your records management solution spans across multiple sites, you can configure records management settings in the following ways:
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Specify the kinds of restrictions to place on a document when it is declared as a record.
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Specify whether all lists or libraries in a site allow for manual declaration of records.
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Specify who can manually declare and undeclare documents as records.
To configure in place records management for a site collection
Note: You must first activate the in place records management feature at the site collection level before you can complete this procedure.
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Navigate to the top level site.
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Click Settings
In a SharePoint group-connected site, click Settings, click Site Contents, and then click Site Settings.
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Under Site Collection Administration, click Record declaration settings.
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On the Record Declaration Settings page, in the Record Restrictions section, select the option that specifies the kind of restrictions that will be placed on an item when it is declared a record. This setting does not affect items already declared as records.
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No Additional Restrictions This restriction is useful if you want records to have a separate retention policy than non-records, but don’t want to block the records from being deleted or edited.
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Block Delete This is the default restriction for the Records Center.
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Block Edit and Delete This restriction is useful if you want to completely lock a document so that it cannot be edited or deleted. A “padlock” icon is associated with the document to visually show that the item is locked.
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In the Record Declaration Availability section, select the option that specifies whether or not items can be manually declared as records in lists and libraries by default. If the Not available in all locations by default option is selected, items can be declared as records only through a policy or workflow.
One option in the Record Declaration Availability section lets you undeclare a record. To do this, in Compliance Details, next to Record Status, click Undeclare Record. You are prompted to confirm that you want to undeclare the item as a record.
Note: The Undeclare option only appears for items previously declared as records.
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In the Declaration Roles section, specify the types of users who can declare or undeclare items as records.
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All list contributors and administrators Any user with the “edit items” permissions to a list can declare and undeclared items as records.
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Only list administrators Only users with “manage list” permissions to a list can declare and undeclare items as records.
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Only policy actions Only policy actions or custom code running as the System Account can declare and undeclare items as records.
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Click OK.
Configure in place records management for a list or library
You can configure records management settings to allow or prevent the creation of records within specific lists or libraries on a site. You can also configure lists and libraries, so that all items added to them are automatically declared as records.
To configure in place records management for a list or library
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Go to the list or library that you want to configure for records management.
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For libraries, under Library Tools, click the Library tab. For lists, under List Tools, click the List tab.
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On the Library Ribbon, click Library Settings. For lists, click List Settings.
In SharePoint Online, click Settings and then click List settings or Library settings.
Note: If you don’t see the ribbon button referenced in this procedure, you may need to adjust your screen resolution or browser window size to expand all the available ribbon buttons. You can also click the group button to expand that group’s button selection.
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On the List Settings page, click Record declaration settings.
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On the Record declaration settings page, in the Manual Record Declaration Availability section, do one of the following:
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Select whether you want to use the site collection default setting.
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Allow for the manual declaration of records for this list or library.
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Never allow for the manual declaration of records for this list or library.
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In the Automatic Declaration section, select whether or not you want items that are added to this list or library to be automatically declared as records.
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Click OK.
Note: Only items with size greater than 0 bytes will be automatically declared as records.
