Skip to main content
We publish frequent updates to our documentation, and translation of this page may still be in progress. For the most current information, please visit the English documentation.
All products
Enterprise administrators

This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-03-15. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Placing a legal hold on a user or organization

You can place a legal hold on a user or organization to ensure that repositories they own cannot be permanently removed from your enterprise.

Usually, if someone deletes a repository, it will be available on disk for 90 days and can be restored via the site admin dashboard. After 90 days the repository is purged and deleted forever. If you place a legal hold on a user or organization, repositories they own are available for restore indefinitely.

  1. Sign in to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance at http(s)://HOSTNAME/login.
  2. From an administrative account on GitHub Enterprise Server, in the upper-right corner of any page, click .
  3. If you're not already on the "Site admin" page, in the upper-left corner, click Site admin.
  4. Under "Search users, organizations, teams, repositories, gists, and applications", type the name of the user or organization in the text field. Then to the right of the field, click Search. Screenshot of the "Search" page of the "Site admin" settings. The button to search users and organizations, labeled "Search," is highlighted with an orange outline.
  5. In the search results, click the name of the user or organization. Screenshot of the "Accounts" search results. In the list of matches, "user1" is highlighted with an orange outline.
  6. In the upper-right corner of the page, click Admin. Screenshot of the header of the "Site admin" page for a user or repository. The "Admin" tab is highlighted with an orange outline.
  7. Under "Legal hold", click Place legal hold.