# Message retention policy

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By default, Zulip stores messages indefinitely, allowing full-text
search of your complete history.

Zulip supports configuring both a global organization-level message
retention policy, as well as retention policies for individual
channels.  These policies control how many days a message is stored
before being automatically deleted (the default being forever).
Zulip's system supports:

* Setting an organization-level retention policy, which applies to
  all direct messages and all channels without a specific policy.
* Setting a retention policy for individual channels, which overrides
  the organization-level policy for that channel.  This can be used to
  just delete messages on specific channels, to only retain messages
  forever on specific channels, or just to have a different retention
  period.

In Zulip Cloud, message retention policies are available on the Zulip
Cloud Standard and Zulip Cloud Plus [plans](https://zulip.com/plans/),
as well as for the hundreds of communities with sponsored Cloud
Standard hosting.

### Configure message retention policy for organization

{start_tabs}

{settings_tab|organization-settings}

4. Under **Message retention**, configure **Message retention period**.

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{end_tabs}

### Configure message retention policy for individual channels

{start_tabs}

{relative|channel|all}

1. Select a channel.

{!select-channel-view-general.md!}

1. Under **Channel permissions**, configure the
   **Message retention period**.

{!save-changes.md!}

{end_tabs}

{!automated-notice-channel-event.md!}

## Important details

* Retention policies are processed in a daily job; so changes in the
  policy won't have any effect until the next time the daily job runs.

* Deleted messages are preserved temporarily in a special archive.  So
if you discover a misconfiguration accidentally deleted content you
meant to preserve, contact Zulip support promptly for assistance with
restoration.  See the [deletion
documentation](/help/delete-a-message#delete-a-message-completely) for
more details on precisely how message deletion works in Zulip.

## Related articles

* [Edit a message](/help/edit-a-message)
* [Delete a message](/help/delete-a-message)
* [Delete a topic](/help/delete-a-topic)
* [Archive a channel](/help/archive-a-channel)