I have recently faced this issue when I was trying to delete a version history in the library. It says that the Version of this item cannot be deleted because it’s on hold or retention.
You are getting this error because there must be retention scheduled for your site collection in the Admin center. This error is not specific while deleting huge versioning details. In fact, if you delete a list or library with too many objects, you will get the same error with another message.
Follow the below steps to solve the issue. I have created a step by step solution of how to resolve it.
- We need to check the hold settings to see if we have any policy created on the site which we need to review.
- Go to Office 365 admin center > Security & Compliance > Search & investigation > eDiscovery
- Validate if there is any case, open the case > Choose the “Hold” tab to see if there are any hold settings.
- To Validate or check the retention policy we need to navigate to the below pages and see
- Go to the Office 365 admin center > Security & Compliance > Data Governance > Retention, check if there is any related policy, select the policy, then view the detailed information under “Applies to content in these locations”.
- Perform modification as needed. If you remove the SPO site, it will start working as expected.