SharePoint can soon delete unused Office files by last opened date
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management will let retention policies and labels in SharePoint and OneDrive delete Microsoft 365 Office files based on when they were last accessed, not only when they were created or last changed. The new control is called When items were last accessed. Preview is due to start in late November 2026 and finish by the end of December 2026. Worldwide general availability is planned from early January 2027 through early February 2027 (Roadmap ID 472030). The feature will be on by default after rollout. No admin work is required before then. This release covers Office file types only. Other files such as PDFs and images are out of scope. Microsoft says clearing obsolete Office files should also improve Copilot answer quality. Earlier 2025 dates have already slipped.
Until now, retention in SharePoint and OneDrive mostly keyed off created or modified dates. A Word file last edited in 2019 but opened every month looked as stale as a true orphan. Teams sprawl cleanup and permission reviews still left libraries full of Office documents nobody had opened in years, which then showed up in search and Copilot. Last accessed is a closer match to unused files, but it is a blunt instrument. Preview, sync, search, and Copilot itself can refresh last-access timestamps, so a quiet policy can still miss junk or catch working files. Because only Office types are included, a library that looks tidy after auto-delete can still be packed with PDFs and images. Treat this as a Copilot-adjacent hygiene control, not a substitute for ownership, archive, or sharing reviews.
Analysis
This is a trend to prepare for, not a tenant-wide delete switch. Before preview, pick one low-risk class of team sites with lots of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and write a draft last-accessed retention rule with a long unused window and a recycle-bin recovery path. Do not point it at the intranet, legal holds, or anything users still browse through search.
Source note
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "SharePoint can soon delete unused Office files by last opened date", Collab365 Spaces. 2 sources referenced.