File expiration and retention are critical aspects of data governance. These settings help organizations comply with regulations, manage storage efficiently, protect sensitive information, and maintain data accuracy by defining how long files are kept.

File Expiration

Use the File Expiration feature to configure expiration rules on a per-folder basis. Once expiration is enabled for a folder, the platform automatically deletes files that have not been modified within the specified number of days.

You must have administrator access to a folder to configure a folder's expiration settings. To enable file expiration, you must supply the path and the number of days that files will be stored before they are automatically deleted. You may also choose to apply the rule only to the files in the folder and not to any of its subfolders.

The File Expiration setting only affects files, so your folder structure will be left intact.

Overriding Settings in Subfolders or Excluding Subfolders Entirely

By default, a folder's File Expiration setting will also apply to its subfolders, but you can override this behavior in two ways.

The first method is to mark a folder expiration setting to not apply to subfolders.

The other way to override the behavior is to configure a separate File Expiration setting for a subfolder path. The subfolder's File Expiration setting can specify a different number of days, or even disable expiration entirely.

Deletion Timing

File expiration settings will apply to all files retroactively. This means if you have files older than the time frame you choose, those files will begin to be deleted within 24 hours of updating the setting.

The deletion of expired files occurs daily. Once per day, files in the affected folder and its subfolders, will have their age checked and, if the file is older than the specified retention period, the file will be deleted. How long the deletion process will take depends on how many files are being deleted and whether sub-folders are included.

Retaining Deleted Files

The File Expiration folder setting removes active files after a specified interval. A separate setting controls how long deleted files are retained as backups eligible for restore.

Restoring Deleted Files

Deleted files can be restored by Site Administrators using the Restore Deleted Files feature.

Mounted Folders

File Expiration settings will not currently work with remote mounted folders, however we hope to lift this limitation in the future.

Logging

When Files.com performs its automated file expiration sweeps and deletes files, those deletions are recorded in the history logs just like any other deletion. The logs will show that the deletion was performed by the user "robot".