How long are deleted items kept in the Recycle Bin in SharePoint?

How long are deleted items kept in the Recycle Bin in SharePoint?

Aimed at:  Edinburgh Napier’s staff

In SharePoint Online, items are retained for 93 days from the time you delete them from their original location. They stay in the site Recycle Bin the entire time, unless someone deletes them from there or empties that Recycle Bin. In that case, the items go to the site collection Recycle Bin, where they stay for the remainder of the 93 days unless:

• the site collection Recycle Bin exceeds its quota and starts purging the oldest items
• the items are manually deleted by the site collection administrator from the site collection Recycle Bin (for info about doing this, see Delete items from the site collection Recycle Bin).