Place Drive, Meet, and Sites data on hold

As part of your Google Workspace data eDiscovery projects, you can use holds to preserve items in Drive indefinitely to meet legal or preservation obligations. You can apply a hold to individual accounts or all accounts in an organizational unit, and optionally include shared drives. Google Meet recordings and associated logs are included in Drive holds, as are sites created in new Google Sites. Holds override retention rules, so data on hold is protected from your normal data governance rules that might purge it otherwise.

Important information about Drive and holds

Before you set holds, we recommend you read Get started with holds in Google Vault and review the Supported data types for Drive, Meet, and Sites.

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Place a hold on Drive, Meet, and Sites files

1. Sign in to vault.google.com.
2. Click Matters.
3. If the matter already exists, click it to open it. Otherwise, create a matter:
   1. Click Create.
   2. Enter a name for the matter and, optionally, a description.
   3. Click Create.
4. Click HoldsCreate.
5. Enter a unique name for the hold.
6. Click Choose serviceDrive.
7. Click Continue.
8. Select the scope of the hold:
   • Specific accounts—Enter one or more account or group email addresses.
   • Organizational unit—Select an organizational unit.

   Note: We strongly recommend that you don’t select the top organizational unit. You won’t be able to delete any Google Workspace accounts from your organization. Learn more

9. Choose if you want the hold to include items in shared drives and then click Continue.
10. Click Create.

Edit a hold on Drive, Meet, and Sites files

You can change some hold parameters, but you can't change the service (Drive to another service) or the scope type (such as accounts to an organizational unit).

1. Sign in to vault.google.com.
2. Click Matters and then the matter that contains the hold.
3. To change the accounts or organizational units that are covered by the hold:
   1. Click Scope.
   2. Add or remove accounts or change the organizational unit.

      Note: You can't add accounts to a hold that covers an organizational unit, and you can't add organizational units to a hold that covers specific accounts.

      If you remove all accounts, you're prompted to delete the hold.

   3. Click Continue.
4. To change if the hold applies to shared drives, click ScopeInclude items in shared drives.
5. Click Save.