zulip/help/message-retention-policy.md

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# Message retention policy
{!owner-only.md!}
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
streams. 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 streams without a specific policy.
* Setting a retention policy for individual streams, which overrides
the organization-level policy for that stream. This can be used to
just delete messages on specific streams, to only retain messages
forever on specific streams, 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 streams
{start_tabs}
{relative|stream|all}
1. Select a stream.
{!select-stream-view-general.md!}
1. Under **Stream permissions**, configure the
**Message retention period**.
{!save-changes.md!}
{end_tabs}
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## 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/edit-or-delete-a-message#delete-a-message-completely) for
more details on precisely how message deletion works in Zulip.
## Related articles
* [Edit or delete a message](/help/edit-or-delete-a-message)
* [Delete a topic](/help/delete-a-topic)
* [Archive a stream](/help/archive-a-stream)