Permanently deleting documents
FileHold deletes documents in two stages:
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Soft delete — The first stage is when a user deletes a document directly from the library or a document is deleted through a deletion scheduled event. Files that have been soft deleted are no longer accessible from the library but still can be recovered by Library Administrators using the Recover Documents utility. The usage log shows the action "Scheduled For Deletion" after a soft delete.
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Hard delete — In the second stage, documents in the soft deletion state are automatically permanently deleted after a set period of time. Documents that have been permanently deleted cannot be recovered. Usage log records are never deleted, but all other related database records and associated files are deleted. The usage log shows the action "Permanently Deleted" after a hard delete.
You can schedule documents to be automatically deleted by scheduling an event and then adding it to a schema. For more information about deleting documents and scheduling events, see Event Schedules.
To set when documents are hard (permanently) deleted
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In Web Client, go to Administration Panel > Library Configuration > Settings > General.
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Under the Permanent Document Deletion Scheduling area, enter the number of days that a document can be permanently deleted after it has been soft deleted. Enter a value between 1 and 1000 days with the default of 7 days.
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Click Update.
When a system is new it may be desirable to set the soft delete retention period to longer than the default to give more time to catch user error as administrators are gaining experience with the system.
Documents are hard deleted as a part of the document lifecycle task that normally runs once per day shortly after midnight. The time of soft deletion is taken into account when the permanent delete calculation is made. This means the actual soft retention period will be up to one day more than the number of days entered on the settings screen. For example, if a document is deleted at 10 am on Apr 1 and the soft retention period is 30 days, the document will be permanently deleted the first time the lifecycle task runs after May 1 at 10 am. In a default installation this will be 12:15 am on May 2.