Welcome back! I was going to work through a demonstration to show you how to declare a record with a retention label, but, in reality, it’s just too easy to have to work through an entire demo. So, what I’m going to do here is just walk you through the process with some screenshots.

Now, when you create a retention label, using Records Management in the Microsoft 365 compliance center, this is where you can mark an item as a record. 

Notice here in the retention settings screen, you can define the retention duration and when that retention duration starts. However, you can also check the box to mark the item as a record. When you do this, notice that it tells you that your users will no longer be able to delete emails that this label is applied to. In addition, only certain users will be able to change or remove the label once it's been applied. Users also won't be able to delete SharePoint files or OneDrive files that this label is applied to. This all makes sense, because you are telling Microsoft 365 that the documents that this label gets applied to are now “records”, and not just documents.

Once you have these settings defined in the label, you apply the label to SharePoint documents, OneDrive documents, and Exchange emails.

Now, once this retention label, which is configured to mark items as a record, is made available to end users, those end users can then apply the label from within their apps. As long as a user has write access to an Exchange Online mailbox, the user can apply this label to that mailbox. As far as SharePoint and OneDrive documents go, any user in the default Members group could apply this label.

The image you are looking at now shows what a document looks like to an end user, once it’s been designated as a record, using a retention label:

 

And that pretty much sums it up. To mark content as a record, simply create a retention label, check the “mark items as record” option, and apply the label to your content.