SharePoint 2019 on-prem - audit log for "Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists, or viewing item properties"

Question

in our SP2019 farm there is no option for auditing View/Downloads.

See this MS Support article: The "Opening/Downloading" option has been REMOVED in SP 2019.

But I tried to do the following:

1. Reporting feature under Site Collection Feature should be activated.

2. To start tracking who and when has viewed / downloaded, etc.., the documents, first you have to create a Site Collection Policy as mentioned below. Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Site Collection Policies

Create new policy -> Provide Name and check the box for Enable Auditing Select Events you would like to audit -> Click OK

3. Then, you have to setup the Document Library / List that you would like to audit Set up the Document Library / List which requires auditing. Go to List Settings or Library Settings of the List / Document Library you would like to audit.

Click on Information Management Policy Settings. Select the content type that you want to set the policy for auditing. Under use site collection policy of that particular content type, select the policy you had defined in first step and click OK.

However, I did not start auditing with these steps.

So the question: is it possible to audit views of Documents with SP2019?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Yes, we could still audit views of Documents in SP2019.

Although the "Opening/Downloading" option has been REMOVED in SP 2019 audit log settings, the option is still available in site settings-> Audit log reports-> Run a custom report.

Answer 2

Regarding a comment in the other answer: it is not that strange that downloading and opening a document in OOS in a browser registers as the same "View" event in the audit logs. If you think about it from a database perspective, it's all just a "Read" in the database, and what happens after that is not a concern for the database.

As mentioned, in SP2019 the audit option "Opening or downloading documents" has been removed for the general site collection level on the Site Collection Audit Settings page in Site Settings. Unfortunately, this change – and most other changes to the auditing features in SP2019 onwards – is undocumented or badly documented at Microsoft. :(

(This thread contains an interesting PowerShell script to enable all auditing on all site collections, but I have not tested it or verified it myself.)

You can still audit the opening/viewing document events by enabling auditing on List or Content Type level. Note that you have enable the site collection feature "Site Policy" to see these options. This feature was active by default in SP2016 Team Sites.

Please see this thread for more details: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/152576/sharepoint-2019-on-premises-audit-log-report.html