Deleting envelopes, and getting them back

Admins can delete envelopes into a 30-day trash. Restore puts one back exactly as it was; after 30 days the documents are removed for good.

Only account admins can delete an envelope, and deleting isn't final: it moves the envelope into a trash where you can restore it for 30 days.

Delete an envelope

Either:

tick envelopes on the Envelopes (or Teams) page and use the delete button in the bar that appears, or
open an envelope, choose More → Delete envelope.

You're asked to confirm. If the envelope is still out for signature, the confirmation says so.

The moment you confirm:

the envelope disappears from every list, report and search, including the sender's own dashboard
its signing links stop working, so people holding a link see that it is no longer available

Any admin in your organisation can delete any envelope in it, whoever sent it.

Deleting is not the same as removing an envelope from your own inbox. A signer using Remove from my inbox only tidies their view; an admin's delete removes the envelope for everyone.

Restore it

Open Admin → Deleted envelopes.
Tick one or more envelopes and choose Restore.

The envelope comes back exactly as it was, audit trail included, with a new entry recording who restored it. The page lists each deleted envelope with who sent it, when and by whom it was deleted, and how many days are left to restore it.

Restore can fail, and the page tells you why:

the documents were already removed for good
the person who sent it no longer has an account in your organisation
some of its files are no longer on the server

Two things to know after a restore. If the expiry date passed while it sat in the trash, it comes back expired. And short links sent by SMS are not brought back, so send those signers a reminder to give them a fresh link.

Delete for good

Delete for good removes the documents from the server straight away, instead of waiting. It can't be undone. Without it, the removal happens by itself 30 days after deletion, and the envelope, its documents and its audit trail are then gone.

Not the same as retention

	Deleting	Retention
Who	An admin, by hand	Automatic, nightly
Envelope record and audit trail	Removed from view (restorable for 30 days)	Kept
Documents	Kept for 30 days, then removed	Removed after your set period
Can be undone	Yes, for 30 days	No

A record of who did it

Every delete, restore and delete-for-good is written to the security log, so the organisation can see who did what.

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