Prevent delete but allow moving files for a document library

Question

I assigned to a user the edit role permission excluding the delete feature in that role. After that, I noticed that the “Move To” feature disappeared from the ribbon because of excluding the delete feature from the edit role.

I did the above because I thoughts about the below options:

Option 1- If I prevented the delete I thought that they can move the file to a specific library called "Deleted files" where only the admins can perform the delete operation in that library.

Option 2 - Is there any idea/way to have approval upon file deletion and if approved the file will be deleted? But the problem is if the user pushed the delete button on the file it will directly go to the recycle bin that's why I am trying to find a way for a manager to approve before deleting any file.

Can please someone advise what will be the workaround to allow moving files without the delete feature or to have an approval process and upon approval delete the file needed (using Power Automate if it will work)?

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thank you!

Answer 1

I am a little unsure if you want to keep the exclusion of the delete or to include it so that users still can move files and then handle potentially wrongly deleted files? In that regard your Option 1 is a little unclear.

In any case I would say there are quite a numbers of possible solutions with Power Atuomate. Which one is better is depending on the scenario (eg how often are files moved and/or deleted intentionally or unintentionally).

1. Let people delete, and monitor recycle bin You can monitor the recycle bin with a Power Automate flow. And let a super user/admin approve when something is put there. It is a little too after the fact of something gone wrong for my liking, but it is possible and in some cases needed.

2. Stop deleting and Use copy to Could users perhaps just copy files instead of moving them? Copy will not delete and so should still work after the delete items permissions have been deselected.

3. Hide documents and delete afterwards Set up a view in the libraries that hides documents with a specific value in a column. Like a "Delete document" yes/no column. Once set to "yes" the view will hide it. A flow will run every time a document is set to "yes" and then delete it (potentially after an approval).